What is v2

Discuss the future of the AutoHotkey language
degarb
Posts: 37
Joined: 28 Mar 2020, 11:55

What is v2

Post by degarb » 19 Jun 2021, 14:28

I really do not think autohotkey can be improved!

Seriously, in 2005, I found, downloaded and made my first exe in 45 minutes, which automated cd batch ripping, stacks of cds without human interaction.

In 2008, I spend a few hundred hours writing (but not needing to study anything) code for online ripping streams, better batch cd ripping from scratch, transcoding audio, batch ripping dvds, weather animating, etc.

I still use nearly all of the scripts daily and hourly. I can still jump in and knock together a very complex script, even without remembering any syntax, in a few minutes.

1. The forum was excellent. 2. The code was humanly readable, even without training. 3. The CHM was perfection. 4. The tools like compile and recorder were excellent for a person with 5 minutes of autohotkey experience. 5. There was no gui, which would have made the docs and web searches, outdated every time a new update became available. A gui simply was not necessary, other than the newbie recorder and compiler gui.

I really think you guys are going to ruin a good thing. I have occasionally read this forum, even though I am not writing code very often (using my old code), and I am already seeing non humanly readable code. Which looks so complex to me that it looks like it needs to be uncompiled to be humanly read.

I cannot function in linux, because it lacks autohotkey. Autohotkey can do things that no other language can.

If you muck up the ease by trying to make it easier to use, you will ruin a good thing. (It reminds me of visual c and visual basic, which are actually harder than non visual c and old basic to learn.)
Last edited by degarb on 19 Jun 2021, 14:49, edited 2 times in total.
degarb
Posts: 37
Joined: 28 Mar 2020, 11:55

Re: What is v2

Post by degarb » 19 Jun 2021, 14:45

Another exhibit I offer to support my assertion that you all will thoroughly screw up autohotkey is a program called freecad.

The ui is visual, and each iteration keeps changing menus. Thus, when you search how to do something, you can only dig up defunct pages describing outdated graphical menus. And the docs are hopelessly outdated, because every 2 or 3 years the gui changes.

Thus, freecad is nearly unusable.

If auto hotkey gets all kinds of graphical editing menus, it too will become hopelessly unusable, and impossible to google solutions.

Stick with the super easy chm and a text editor. I like the idea of an autocomplete text editors for autohotkey, but I wouldn't go further than that. I would keep the option to use notepad. I use edit pad lite, which I have not updated in 12 years.

Seriously, I plead with you guys. There is such a thing as "Perfected Software", where any changes, especially major changes, are a downgrade or breakage. 95 percent of upgrades and updates, either break or remove functionality or usability. I have a 80 year old former machanical engineer uncle who had to give up android, because they upgraded to version 8 and hid features that he relied upon. I too needed these features, but found I needed to install desktop replacements to get these feature back. ... Weather.gov upgraded their dopplers in December, and broke useful animation length, data conservancy, local resolution, and remote access. Upgrades suck, 95 percent of the time, usually because the coding is done by new kids who don't understand the historic reasons for each feature and the evolution as it happened. Sadly, I bet some of the new ahk programmers were in diapers or elementary school when I found autohotkey, thus they think 20 years into the future is a long time for backwards compatibility. It is NOT, I warn you. Life goes in 30 year jumps, with the exception of the first 15 years which is its own segment.
degarb
Posts: 37
Joined: 28 Mar 2020, 11:55

Re: What is v2

Post by degarb » 19 Jun 2021, 14:56

I do suspect the forum has suffered, over the years, because of people migrating over to linux, when windows dropped some of their backward compatibility. Now, the forum will suffer from a code fork. This will half the number of people using each fork, and the forum help. I personally will stick to the backward compatibility, thank you.

A better direction would be to offer a linux version, with same code available, to reinvigorate the forum.

(Mostly irrelevant comment: I also have been beating my head into the wall trying to get into the forum. I think today, I glimpsed why. I think there is a autohotkey dead forum version, whose front door is still rejecting people's log in attempts.)
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vvhitevvizard
Posts: 454
Joined: 25 Nov 2018, 10:15
Location: Russia

Re: What is v2

Post by vvhitevvizard » 19 Jun 2021, 16:06

degarb wrote:
19 Jun 2021, 14:28
I really do not think autohotkey can be improved!
In a nutshell, AHK v1 cannot be called a scripting language - its a set of heterogenous commands...
degarb wrote:
19 Jun 2021, 14:28
2. The code was humanly readable, even without training.
I beg to differ - learning curve was relatively steep - a typical AHK v1 user couldn't write a single line w/o looking at the online documentation - commands' syntax was non-unified.
Seriously, I plead with you guys. There is such a thing as "Perfected Software", where any changes, especially major changes, are a downgrade or breakage.
There is NO such a thing as "Perfected software". Perfect software is just an Illusion.
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boiler
Posts: 16767
Joined: 21 Dec 2014, 02:44

Re: What is v2

Post by boiler » 19 Jun 2021, 18:36

degarb wrote: If auto hotkey gets all kinds of graphical editing menus, it too will become hopelessly unusable, and impossible to google solutions.

Stick with the super easy chm and a text editor. I like the idea of an autocomplete text editors for autohotkey, but I wouldn't go further than that. I would keep the option to use notepad. I use edit pad lite, which I have not updated in 12 years.
You apparently have no idea what v2 is if these are your concerns.

degarb wrote: Upgrades suck, 95 percent of the time, usually because the coding is done by new kids who don't understand the historic reasons for each feature and the evolution as it happened. Sadly, I bet some of the new ahk programmers were in diapers or elementary school when I found autohotkey, thus they think 20 years into the future is a long time for backwards compatibility. It is NOT, I warn you. Life goes in 30 year jumps, with the exception of the first 15 years which is its own segment.
You apparently have no idea who the primary developer of v2 is if this is your concern.

degarb wrote: What is v2
Taking this question at face value, see the AutoHotkey v2 documentation.
swagfag
Posts: 6222
Joined: 11 Jan 2017, 17:59

Re: What is v2

Post by swagfag » 22 Jun 2021, 06:35

degarb wrote:
19 Jun 2021, 14:45
Upgrades suck, 95 percent of the time, usually because the coding is done by new kids who don't understand the historic reasons for each feature and the evolution as it happened. Sadly, I bet some of the new ahk programmers were in diapers or elementary school when I found autohotkey, thus they think 20 years into the future is a long time for backwards compatibility. It is NOT, I warn you. Life goes in 30 year jumps, with the exception of the first 15 years which is its own segment.
yeah and 95% of the time, statistics are being pulled out from somebody's arse. ask me how i know this :D
by that metric, we must conclude that lexikos was nothing short of a child prodigy - even before he took over, his contributions simply made sense

and u know what, for a guy that by his own admission only very seldomly peruses the forum, u seem to have an awful lot of opinions about it. i suggest u take a step back

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