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AppleScript is a great idea in how everything is scriptable. Unfortunately, the language itself is a horrible abomination from the wild 1990s days of Mac OS...

AppleScript is a great idea in how everything is scriptable. Unfortunately, the language itself is a horrible abomination from the wild 1990s days of Mac OS... sorry, now macOS... and writing absolutely anything in it is painful. I feel like Apple introduced Automator to overcome the pain of AppleScript, but it never really caught on (I don't even know if Automator is still on macOS.... yep it is, still with the cute Aquaesque icon) Nowadays everything is Electron anyway and those are not that well AppleScript-able, but what to do, that's life

Gaelan 7y ago
"AppleScript" can do JS now, but it's so clunky and badly documented that it's barely worth it.
- hhas01 7y ago
  JXA, like Scripting Bridge before it, was shipped crippled and buggy and abandoned once it was out the door. Apple finally disbanded the Mac Automation team and fired the PM responsible a couple years ago. In fact, there are several production-tested Apple event bridges that totally wipe the floor with Apple’s failed attempts, but caveat emptor as I don’t do support: http://appscript.sourceforge.net http://appscript.sourceforge.net https://www.npmjs.com/package/nodeautomation https://www.npmjs.com/package/nodeautomation https://hhas.bitbucket.io/welcome.html https://hhas.bitbucket.io/welcome.html We’ll see what happens when Shortcuts lands in 10.16, but I’d say the chances of Apple event automation having a long and healthy life ahead are 50/50, at best.
srikz 7y ago
I think AppleScript and Automator is/will be deprecated and the replacement would be Shortcuts present on iOS. I think the main developer of AppleScript left Apple last year. I think I read something on these lines on HN, I may be remembering things slightly wrong
chipotle_coyote 7y ago
The language itself is pretty bonkers, to be sure. I think the Amiga probably did this better with ARexx, simply because Rexx was much better for "friendly scripting language." I was going to say I'd made my peace with AppleScript, but it'd be more honest to say "I've gotten better at beating AppleScript into submission." iOS Workflow/Shortcuts is what Automator should have been in a lot of ways. If Automator was superseded by a macOS version of Shortcuts, I'd actually love it, as long as it didn't lose any of Automator's functionality. (All they'd really need to do is add Shortcuts that run AppleScripts and shell scripts, I think, and be able to use automator actions exposed by applications.)
- hhas01 7y ago
  Expect Shortcuts to land in 10.16. Most of the plumbing’s already in 10.15; it’s just not public yet. https://twitter.com/stroughtonsmith/status/1135956331360346113 https://twitter.com/stroughtonsmith/status/11359563313603461...

Gaelan 7y ago

"AppleScript" can do JS now, but it's so clunky and badly documented that it's barely worth it.

hhas01 7y ago
JXA, like Scripting Bridge before it, was shipped crippled and buggy and abandoned once it was out the door. Apple finally disbanded the Mac Automation team and fired the PM responsible a couple years ago. In fact, there are several production-tested Apple event bridges that totally wipe the floor with Apple’s failed attempts, but caveat emptor as I don’t do support: http://appscript.sourceforge.net http://appscript.sourceforge.net https://www.npmjs.com/package/nodeautomation https://www.npmjs.com/package/nodeautomation https://hhas.bitbucket.io/welcome.html https://hhas.bitbucket.io/welcome.html We’ll see what happens when Shortcuts lands in 10.16, but I’d say the chances of Apple event automation having a long and healthy life ahead are 50/50, at best.

srikz 7y ago

I think AppleScript and Automator is/will be deprecated and the replacement would be Shortcuts present on iOS. I think the main developer of AppleScript left Apple last year. I think I read something on these lines on HN, I may be remembering things slightly wrong

chipotle_coyote 7y ago

The language itself is pretty bonkers, to be sure. I think the Amiga probably did this better with ARexx, simply because Rexx was much better for "friendly scripting language." I was going to say I'd made my peace with AppleScript, but it'd be more honest to say "I've gotten better at beating AppleScript into submission." iOS Workflow/Shortcuts is what Automator should have been in a lot of ways. If Automator was superseded by a macOS version of Shortcuts, I'd actually love it, as long as it didn't lose any of Automator's functionality. (All they'd really need to do is add Shortcuts that run AppleScripts and shell scripts, I think, and be able to use automator actions exposed by applications.)

hhas01 7y ago
Expect Shortcuts to land in 10.16. Most of the plumbing’s already in 10.15; it’s just not public yet. https://twitter.com/stroughtonsmith/status/1135956331360346113 https://twitter.com/stroughtonsmith/status/11359563313603461...