AHK in a work environment

[sebguy22]

Am new to a fairly strictly regulated company, where the IT guys are (rightfully, I guess) very concerned about safety.

If I were to request AHK to be installed on my machine, I wonder whether and how they could make sure that this app is safe.
Can they make sure that this app does nothing harmless or not really?

(I presume they know stuff, like administrative business on windows like active directories, but I am not sure they are as comfortable about switching to another language to check whether it's safe)

[boiler]

It depends on what you mean by "safe." If you download it from the official site, it won't contain any malware. However, just about any programming language can be used for malicious purposes, so there's no testing that could be done to prove it's not capable of doing something they would consider unsafe. It becomes more of a question of whether they allow programming languages that are able to produce scripts or executables that can be run on your machine.

There has to be some level of trust with you as the user, so it has more to do with that rather than AHK as a tool. You can do a lot of malicious things without a programming language, such as deleting a whole directory on a network drive using File Explorer.

[Xtra]

You can have IT look at AHK from the Microsoft store.
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=73724

[SOTE]

You can have IT look at AHK from the Microsoft store.

Good suggestion. IT people are often quite conservative and scared of getting blamed for any issues. Pointing them or management to AHK on the Microsoft store, will do more to alleviate fears. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/autohotkey-store-edition/9nq8q8j78637?rtc=1&source=lp&activetab=pivot:overviewtab

@sebguy22

Something else that I noticed when people get involved in such discussions with their IT, is the power dynamic involved. When the person is part of management or has got a manager to back them up about what they want to do on the computer, IT is way more likely to go along with it (even enthusiastically). On the flip, if they see the person as some "nobody" and management or ownership is not involved, then the lazy and easy answer is "no".

[boiler]

When the person is part of management or has got a manager to back them up about what they want to do on the computer, IT is way more likely to go along with it (even enthusiastically). On the flip, if they see the person as some "nobody" and management or ownership is not involved, then the lazy and easy answer is "no".

That's a good point. I have seen the same thing. They almost see it as they're partnering with the group that requested it when their management is involved, especially if it can help them sell it to their bosses as "look what we've implemented and how much time/money it can help save their group and the company."