3 ms·

Is it weird that I like Windows only because of AHK?

thot_experiment 4y ago
A little, but I did drop by this thread to say that it's one of the absolute "killer apps" for windows. It's a very VERY complete swiss army knife of automation and makes it trivial to build little utilities that interface with the OS. I use it all the time. It's been a while so perhaps the situation w/ linux and OSX has improved, but IIRC linux was very fragmented/finnicky and OSX is absurdly overzealous on permissions so you can never get anything useful done. I'm constantly frustrated by the enormous gulf between what my computer COULD do vs what it actually CAN do because of how much stupid wall building everyone does. AHK is one of the few things that meaningfully bridges that gap. There are so many things that are infinitely frustrating because you have to click through like 10 menus instead of issuing a simple API command, and with AHK you can get some of that back. We live in a world where 9 times out of 10 I won't open Premiere or whatever, because it's so much faster to just use ffmpeg. I want a world where Premiere still has all it's ui shit, but also has a decent scripting interface. It's one of the reasons I'm so bullish on Blender in the 3DCG space. The scriptability/extensibility is so far ahead of everything except Houdini.
geocrasher 4y ago
Whenever I mention why Windows is my OS of choice, one of the very first reasons I list is AHK. I have hundreds of little macros that save me gobs of typing. It works beautifully almost anywhere (Although, NP++ hates it... I wonder if V2 fixes that?) It'll be a while before I give it a try, because it sounds like I'll have to convert a bunch of stuff- but I'm definitely going to give it a try. I'm just overjoyed that AHK is in active development still! Been using it for well over a decade. My Favorite Use of AHK 2014. My grandfather was in his mid-80's. He lost dexterity in his hands, and was having a very difficult time because he was clicking both left and right mouse buttons at the same time. AHK to the rescue! I re-mapped right mouse button to nothing, effectively disabling it. Then, I mapped NumPad+ to the right mouse button. If he needed to right click, he just pointed, pressed NumPad+. Otherwise, he could click both buttons all day long and the computer operated just fine. He got a few more months use out of that before he passed away, and it remains the most meaningful computer fix of my entire career. I miss that man. A lot.
cfiggers 4y ago
Nope, not weird. I feel exactly the same way.

A little, but I did drop by this thread to say that it's one of the absolute "killer apps" for windows. It's a very VERY complete swiss army knife of automation and makes it trivial to build little utilities that interface with the OS. I use it all the time. It's been a while so perhaps the situation w/ linux and OSX has improved, but IIRC linux was very fragmented/finnicky and OSX is absurdly overzealous on permissions so you can never get anything useful done. I'm constantly frustrated by the enormous gulf between what my computer COULD do vs what it actually CAN do because of how much stupid wall building everyone does. AHK is one of the few things that meaningfully bridges that gap. There are so many things that are infinitely frustrating because you have to click through like 10 menus instead of issuing a simple API command, and with AHK you can get some of that back. We live in a world where 9 times out of 10 I won't open Premiere or whatever, because it's so much faster to just use ffmpeg. I want a world where Premiere still has all it's ui shit, but also has a decent scripting interface. It's one of the reasons I'm so bullish on Blender in the 3DCG space. The scriptability/extensibility is so far ahead of everything except Houdini.

geocrasher 4y ago

Whenever I mention why Windows is my OS of choice, one of the very first reasons I list is AHK. I have hundreds of little macros that save me gobs of typing. It works beautifully almost anywhere (Although, NP++ hates it... I wonder if V2 fixes that?) It'll be a while before I give it a try, because it sounds like I'll have to convert a bunch of stuff- but I'm definitely going to give it a try. I'm just overjoyed that AHK is in active development still! Been using it for well over a decade. My Favorite Use of AHK 2014. My grandfather was in his mid-80's. He lost dexterity in his hands, and was having a very difficult time because he was clicking both left and right mouse buttons at the same time. AHK to the rescue! I re-mapped right mouse button to nothing, effectively disabling it. Then, I mapped NumPad+ to the right mouse button. If he needed to right click, he just pointed, pressed NumPad+. Otherwise, he could click both buttons all day long and the computer operated just fine. He got a few more months use out of that before he passed away, and it remains the most meaningful computer fix of my entire career. I miss that man. A lot.

cfiggers 4y ago

Nope, not weird. I feel exactly the same way.