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Central » On Programming
Okay, so I have never had a great love for programming. HTML, PHP, Visual Basic, or just about any other API out there. Python is now attached to that list of "if I have to, I guess".
However, the only enjoyable API I've come across lately has been AutoIt. It's a smarter language than it's probably given credit for. I've created about a dozen programs with it so far, and it's fairly easy to learn and write. I've even created an App-V (Softgrid 4.5) package, so I can break down my code at problem locations (yes, there's a way to make it portable, but I don't carry my drives with me all the time).
See, I just finished a task with Python, to add in a location awareness to our sysprep CompRename script. Basically, the script uses a url with the MAC address of the machine to derive the computer name, and ActiveDirectory OU scheme. Recently, I've made said script forget about joining the domain, just for a particular lab on campus. But, I know we have a need for telling our Ghost Solution Suite clients which server they should be talking to. So I added several extra lines of code to install the GSS client with the proper server.
The issue? It took me 8 hours. Because I'm not a natural Python programmer. Trying to find GCCMain or GCCNorth was bad enough. It spat back all sorts of errors, and after about 30 different variations of the same 5 lines of code, in the last half hour, I boiled it down to 3, with the compiled regular expression (GCC)(Main|North). If it were an AutoIt script, I'd already have had it done in two hours time. And I'll give a reason why: There's ONE repository for it's documentation. It's not taught at schools, and so when you search for info on a command, it's central to ONE website, not 20+.
AutoIt - This sounds like a really neat, actually useful API. I recently did a fresh install of Windows 7 x64 (couldn't upgrade from Windows 7 RC already on the box), and I had a number of programs that needed to be reinstalled. For the most part, these programs can take care of themselves once the install process is started, but there was a set of items that I had to install one-by-one... and that was frustrating because there weren't any pointers online regarding automating their installation (the common answer: it can't be done). I wonder if AutoIt will facilitate this automation... hmm.
Frustration of languages - I really think all programming languages have their purposes, though some aren't as great for some purposes as others. Unfortunately, I'm not familiar with Python (yet, but it's something I want to learn) so I can't be of much help. Curious: what was your reasoning for using Python?
Posted by Crystie Lopez, 03/11/2009 9:55am (2 years ago)
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