Hacker News Reader

Comment by nooyurrsdey | Hacker News Reader

Love the project but I really wish projects (especially linux projects) would include a "plain english" description of what this does at the top. Like, even one sentence.

1. Not everyone knows what AutoHotkey is and what it does. I had to google it.

2. Not everyone speaks english. Diving into a description that includes words like "fault tolerant, extensible, high availability" so infuriatingly confusing.

View on HN

I don't think that (2) is OP's fault.

Look the words up in a dictionary. It's ok not to know and to learn but you shouldn't expect everyone to adapt to your lack of knowledge.

A dictionary probably won't give you a useful definition for most of those terms. They're jargon.

But then again I would add (3) they're just buzzwords that don't actually tell you anything...

Perhaps not HA, but 'fault tolerant' and 'extensible' are pretty apt.

....explain it like I'm 5 years old?

If everyone wrote software to be used by 5 years old without any interest in looking up things they don't understand (yet) themselves, we'd never move the field forward.

AutoHotKey is not normally aimed at developers but highly skilled administrators. If you target your advertising at this market you would likely get more traction.

Moving the field of software development is about solving more problems for people without putting a large learning curve in their way.

Yes some aspects will always require expertise but that is not an advantage.

Dictionary is good for learning words.

1. Thank you for the suggestion. I added the one-liner description from the Windows website to the top of the Readme.

2. Those words aren't in the Readme so I'm a bit confused. I guess these were just examples though. I am not a native speaker either though... if you really think there's uncommon words to be found, I would welcome a PR.

  > I added the one-liner description from the Windows website.

Bad idea, you don't need an infringement case. Try this instead: "An easy to learn language for automating your Linux computer". People who don't know what AHK is don't care that this project is a port of it, so no need to mention that in the description.

tbh your suggestion would confuse me as well, i think the scope or better said usp of ahk is more specific, and the proposed description could very well mean bash or other comparable tools

#2 is pretty common software lingo. If you’re esl you definitely are going to want to look that one up.

Pretty ironic to write "esl" instead of the expanded form.

what's ironic about it?

If someone "is ESL", it's less likely that they will know what "ESL" means, so it's another layer for them to parse.

That doesn't really fit the definition of irony...

Oh no. I guess it's my ESL showing.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com