AutoIT vs Python question

[NicolasB]

Hello,

I am very new to AutoIT. I've been playing around with the tool and created script about basic Windows GUI actions (ie Open Excel Spreadheet, refresh all, save and close), and this makes me wonder: are there things that AutoIT can do that Python can't re: Windows UI automation?

I'm trying to convince my team to switch to AutoIT. Any arguments any one can give me will be great!

Thanks!

[Bert]

Both languages are good to work with. One big difference between them is Python has multi-threading support. AutoIT doesn't. Unless you are building major applications, this should not be a problem. AutoIt is also intended for windows. Python is portable. 

AutoIt is very easy to do automation. When it was first conceived, that was the intent of the language. Over the years it grew into the language it is today.  I code in many languages, depending on the need. No one language is the swiss army knife of computer languages. If your team is comfortable with Python & it meets their needs, then I'd go with that. You may want to do a demo on how to do things in both languages if you see how things could be made easier. You may find AUtoIt is easier or Python is easier - it ALL depends on your needs. 

One big thing with AUtoIT is you don't need to have libraries. All the coding you need can be placed in a single script and compiled.  Scripts to automate can be very simple. The forum has thousands of examples of scripts that can do just about anything. 

Not sure if this answers your question. 

[Danp2]

Another option would be to introduce AutoitX to your team so that they could continue coding in Python and take advantage of some Autoit features.

[junkew]

Why do you want to switch? In general you will only convince people when there are big differences which you need in your team acsolution for.

https://github.com/pywinauto/pywinauto

Edited February 27, 2020 by junkew

[Earthshine]

i would stick with python myself

[Nine]

He hasn't come back since his post.  I do not think it is that important for him.  We all prefer some technologies over other.  He is that kind of person, and I must admit I was part of those ppl long time ago. So if I was to convince some persons that AutoIt is the best tool, well I suppose that giving extensive training on AutoIt would help solving the problem.

[Dana86]

I use both Autoit & Python, I just wrote a private library to make Au3 emulate to Python & a Python library to emulate Au3  Not the most github friendly solution but it gets things done much faster. 

You can build a simple parallel computing solution with Autoit pretty easily, with some .txt files or databases as variable inputs & outputs and just use the complied .exe code as an object. Somethings like Python's Tensorflow is harder to replace  with Autoit, but because Au3 is so much easier & faster to code, you can build a simple decision tree machine learning library with Autoit in as little as a few days. I will admit tho JSON is wayyy harder to read & write in Au3 vs Python.  

[AspirinJunkie]

On 2/27/2020 at 2:24 PM, Bert said:

One big difference between them is Python has multi-threading support.

Ever heard about the Global Interpreter Lock (GIL) in Python?
In short: Only one thread is allowed to run at a time.
Threads in Python (CPython, PyPy, Cython) don't run parallel at the same time.
So multithreading isn't a benefit of Python against AutoIt.

Edit: oh damn - i replied to a zombie thread... 👎

Edited February 7, 2021 by AspirinJunkie

[JockoDundee]

1 hour ago, AspirinJunkie said:

So multithreading isn't a benefit of Python against AutoIt.

Disagree.  You’re right to point out that python has a mutex restricting the interpreter to service just a single thread at a time.

This is a weak threading model for sure.

But it is still superior to AutoIt model.
Why? Because it allows you to write multiple, lightweight threads each with their own Instruction pointer.  So you can create a thread just to wait for some output or condition, and still have access to the memory space.

Unless you are creating threads that are purely crunching numbers or otherwise running at a high CPU%, you’re unlikely to know the difference.  But for me, and IMHO, threading is usually about being in two places at the same time, and less about doing two things at the same time.

Edit: oh damn - I replied to a reply of a zombie thread...👎

Edited February 7, 2021 by JockoDundee

[JockoDundee]

 

Quote

good point.