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Comment by jakejake | Hacker News Reader

I'm only slightly ashamed to admit I like using a mouse. I get that some people can work faster with all-keyboard controls. I use both. I also like GUIs for certain things. The only thing I don't like GUIs for is when there is some repetitive thing that I have to do 50 times a day and would require 3 or 4 clicks or menu selections - for those I'd always rather have a single command. Sometimes I make those into shell scripts that I can click with my mouse though!

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Might already be familiar with it, but if you aren't, you should check out sikuli script [1] for when you have a repetitive GUI task you have to perform that can't be directly scripted. I've used it to script some really complex workflows through GUI's

It's also just weird and interesting to program something to move through a GUI as fast as is possible

1: http://www.sikuli.org/

Wow. Never heard of it, but this must be the most amazing software idea I've seen in a while. It's gonna be a playful day :P

Hahah, awesome.

Yeah, getting the scripts to run and be robust is definitely an art sort of thing, but I've used it to create what amounts to a CLI's for legacy apps that you could only interface with through GUI's.

It's also fun to run across stuff like "Oh, the developer of this platform wasn't expecting me to be able to respond to a window within 20ms of it popping up on the screen."

Be interested to see what you think, if you have time to leave a comment

Didn't have all the time I wanted today but played with 'hello world' samples and it's a fun new way of scripting for me. I don't have an immediate use for it but next time I feel something needs automation I'm definitely going to give it a go.

That's great, we have an app that can't be tested with Selenium, Sikuli looks promising.

> I'm only slightly ashamed to admit I like using a mouse.

I wish that you weren't even slightly ashamed. Anything can turn into a senseless religion, also supposed productivity.

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