Hacker News Reader

what's wrong with automator exactly? i've been wanting to get into it on my new mac but i'm not entirely sure what i will use it for yet.

View on HN

Personally I find it very weird to work with. I don’t see the point of learning a different and less powerful coding paradigm. It would be fine if it had it a current UI but you also should be able to write plain text code.

You _can_ write plain text code, add an Applescript or Javascript block. Or just use Script Editor directly instead of going through Automator.

Apple Events are quite powerful and let you add a lot of functionality.

I hope you would agree that this unnecessarily cumbersome. A plain text script file is hard to beat.

As I said, you can use Script Editor.app, in the Utilities folder, instead of Automator.

Personally, I like to write and test Applescripts in the Script Editor, and then throw them into Automator when I'm finished so I can save them as "Services", which means they'll appear in the right click menu of whatever app(s) I choose. But that's entirely optional.

You can call arbitrary scripts from Automator and pass in arguments.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com