Auto It Vs. (insert various language here)

[Jkeith247]

I am a novice AutoIt programmer. In the last few months I have learned a lot playing around with AutoIt. The one thing I have discovered is the fact that I love programming. Having the ability to write an application to suit your needs is very empowering.

In my quest for knowledge and proficiency in the programming field, I have brought myself to a few questions. What does AutoIt do that other languages do not? What do other programs languages do that AutoIt does not? If I am looking to learn more would it be more beneficial to me to become more proficient in AutoIt or branch off into other languages to become more well rounded?

I really love AutoIt, and the community here is awesome! All I am really looking for is some advice on what to do to learn more about programming.

Thank you!

[seandisanti]

I am a novice AutoIt programmer. In the last few months I have learned a lot playing around with AutoIt. The one thing I have discovered is the fact that I love programming. Having the ability to write an application to suit your needs is very empowering.

In my quest for knowledge and proficiency in the programming field, I have brought myself to a few questions. What does AutoIt do that other languages do not? What do other programs languages do that AutoIt does not? If I am looking to learn more would it be more beneficial to me to become more proficient in AutoIt or branch off into other languages to become more well rounded?

I really love AutoIt, and the community here is awesome! All I am really looking for is some advice on what to do to learn more about programming.

Thank you!

I'm proficient in a lot of languages, but for normal day to day stuff, I find myself using autoit the most. I personally don't think i've used another language that made working with windows as simple as this one. It does have it's limitations, but most of them can be worked around as necessary (multi threading is one example). If the primary working environment for things that you make is going to be a windows machine, autoit may be the only language you ever need. That said, you may end up writing something that you want to be able to run on different platforms, or that you're not able to with autoit. I haven't run into THAT yet, but I know some people have. It never hurts to know multiple languages, and can definitely give you an advantage when you do run into a problem to know several different ways to approach it. That said, it's definitely in your best interest to really understand your first langauge (whether it's autoit or anything else) before moving on to another. The more you've worked through with that one, the easier time you'll have learning your second language, because it's always easier to learn how to do something in a new language if you already know how to do it in another. There are decent forums nowadays for just about any language you'd feel like picking up, lately i've been playing with python, and have been slightly active on http://python-forum.org. I decided to play with python because it's platform independent, very extensible, and there are tons of 3rd party libraries and modules already written for it.

[omikron48]

One of the advantages of AutoIt I really liked is that its core library only uses stuff that is natively available in Windows, i.e. You don't need to install anything else to run your basic AutoIt script. Stuff developed in C#, VB.Net, etc need the .Net framework installed to run. Stuff developed in Java need the Java Runtime Engine. AutoIt has the option of packaging the interpreter along with the script into a reasonably sized executable.

AutoIt, however, does not natively support Object Oriented Programming, but I think someone made something that allows AutoIt to have OOP functionality, just haven't gotten around to learning it yet.