Openness and AutoIt evangelists

[JRowe]

It seems a very simple and clear issue to me. I think someone (more experienced than I) should take the effort to go out and grab the attention and support of the major open source communities.

Windows is ubiquitous. It's a simple acknowledgment of fact that any significant software has to be written to at least run on some form of the windows OS, or the majority of computer users will never see it. It would be a triumph for both the AutoIt community and any open source community to join forces.

Some initial recommendations are:

Mozilla

Ogre3D

MySQL

SQLite

At any rate, AutoIt could do with some evangelists, with the support of the MVPs and the Developers!

Imagine comprehensive UDFs that dealt with incredibly complex software systems, such as advanced neural nets, networking, or 3D packages, released as a standard custom UDF every time a community updates their source code!

This benefits everyone. People who want the simplicity of a scripting system such as AutoIt get their wish. People who want to rapidly prototype software with a particular open source package (Ogre3D or Mozilla come to mind) get the advantage of using AutoIt.

Developers flock to AutoIt to extend and enhance existing functionality, even to the extent of providing cross-platform implementations.

Newbies have multiple communities to move to, depending on their specific needs. No more "How do I do a 3D application with AutoIt" threads.

Developers have more mindshare, and fewer individual requests for features and assistance, and more time to devote to their own particular ideas of where development should be going. This lets the people who know what's what do what's needed.

The licensing can be as open or closed as you want, as long as it's compatible with other packages. I see no downsides to this. As an end-user, consumer type, I know it's ultimately selfish of me to ask, but hell... why not? It does nothing but good, and some sort of license that includes the following:

"If you make more than $10,000.00, then you have to remit 1% of your profits to AutoIt's creators."

I seriously see nothing but goodness. Someone should go forth into the wilderness and preach the good word of AutoIt. If given the go ahead, I would gladly run to as many communities as I could think of to recruit, but I don't think I'm knowledgeable enough to make the best case for AutoIt. I would willingly do reconnaissance, if I had the support of a developer. I can do targets and PR. The actual evangelizing specific to any community in question would be up to a dev. I would only embarrass myself if I tried to grab random communities by myself.

So... thoughts?

I'll do the grunt work, if a dev is willing to sponsor my efforts.

[BrettF]

Intresting...

[weaponx]

I think I can speak for everyone when I say - Are you out of your god damn mind?

Imagine comprehensive UDFs that dealt with incredibly complex software systems, such as advanced neural nets, networking, or 3D packages, released as a standard custom UDF every time a community updates their source code!

This is called SkyNet...this is what Microsoft tries to do every day of our lives. Also this is what COM objects / dlls are meant to provide, a standardized interface for applications.

I think you are overlooking the original purpose of AutoIt. An OOP language would have to be a requirement for this type of universal application, and we already have Ruby, Python, and Java...

[Valik]

First of all, AutoIt isn't open source. While it's not commercial software, either, I think the fact that it's not open-source severely limits who would even consider such an idea.

Second, and perhaps more importantly, this idea is a bit ridiculous. AutoIt isn't suited for these things. 3D graphics? AutoIt starts chugging along just trying to do owner-drawn controls. 3D-graphics are not going to reach an acceptable level of performance for anything more than a neat demo, at least not for a very long time. Database stuff is probably a pretty realistic goal and things have been done in that area since database software usually expose a COM interface. There are already some UDF's for working with databases. However, the moment you need to use AutoIt code to work with a large set of data, performance is going to reach unacceptable levels. Mozilla support? And which one of the two projects - AutoIt or Mozilla - is going to implement the proprietary interface to communicate with the other? Need I remind you that Mozilla is multi-platform and AutoIt is not? What's in it for them? Python or something would be a much better "partner language" since Python runs on the same platforms as Mozilla products.

Lastly, I detest evangelism in all it's forms. AutoIt isn't the end-all of scripting languages. It's a nice, useful language with it's own niche but none of us are under any delusions of grandeur as far as it's usefulness is concerned. The fact is, AutoIt is slow, which means it's possible to do many neat things but it's not practical for many of the things it can do.

Edit: Fixed last sentence which was a bit harsher than intended.

Edited May 25, 2008 by Valik

[JRowe]

Alright.

I understand the various viewpoints. I still think that AutoIt could make some waves, but I won't pursue it. Food for thought, for now

Edit: Fixed last sentence which was a bit harsher than intended.

Valik seems to be like a cold splash of reality in the face of improbable ideas. Making it more palatable is always nicer for the recipients. Thanks for that

[weaponx]

Alright.

I understand the various viewpoints. I still think that AutoIt could make some waves, but I won't pursue it. Food for thought, for now

Valik seems to be like a cold splash of reality in the face of improbable ideas. Making it more palatable is always nicer for the recipients. Thanks for that

I think the point is that progress is preferred over speculation here. If someone was serious about doing a project they wouldn't be here talking about it, they would work on it and provide a working example that others could collaborate on.

This reminds me of when people come up with ideas for game mods on Moddb.com. These great projects get posted (i'm looking at you Jurassic Park mod for Crysis), but they are nothing but a pipe dream. Instead of posting 3 screenshots of a partially rendered dinosaur they should have waited until some of the actual gameplay was completed.

We want to see people being eaten by fucking dinosaurs, not screenshots of a wireframe model.

[Richard Robertson]

Wow, how did I miss this thread?

Some ideas are less feasible than others. Unfortunately, I think I picked one of those less feasible but not entirely impossible projects of an AutoIt.Net interface.

[Locodarwin]

In order to make these things happen, AutoIt would have to grow out of its scripting roots and become a compiled language. As was said, it's just too slow to expect 3rd parties to consider it acceptable as a supportable development "platform."

Not that I'm not interested in such a thing. In fact, I'm very interested. The syntax and usability of AutoIt lends itself nicely to a revolution in compiled languages. The UDF concept and implementation itself is pretty innovative, the way it's done with AutoIt. It's just that the work it would take to make it a compiled language is monumental. The compiler would be a different beast altogether from the scripting language. The routines are already there, though...they'd just have to be refactored. The best idea would be to crunch down to assembly (NASM or similar). I have a working test right now that converts some of the simpler keywords and functions down into NASM, and compiles with a console EXE wrapper.

It sounds pretty good, the more I think about it and play with it. Prototype your program in interpreted AutoIt first, then compile it to machine code once it's properly debugged.

Hmm.

Overall your proposal isn't hitting the mark, though. On the one hand you suggest getting together with Open Source communities. On the other hand you suggest licensing fees. While I get the overall sentiment of your argument, the details are a little hazy and sound too political. One thing I've noticed about the developers here - for better or worse, they're not really interested in taking the language much further than where it's at. Or that's the feeling I get, anyway.

-S

Edited May 30, 2008 by Locodarwin

[Valik]

Loco, we've made it this far by letting the language carry itself. We haven't brought it to where it is. I see no reason to change that now.

Just out of curiosity, what do you find so innovative about the UDF concept and implementation?

[Lakes]

A compiled language (C# etc) using the autoit dll would seem to be the best compromise at the moment.

[Richard Robertson]

Not really. The AutoIt dll is limited. Also, you get people asking how to run scripts from the dll.

[LarryDalooza]

A compiled language (C# etc) using the autoit dll would seem to be the best compromise at the moment.

What flavor of C# is a compiled language? I assumed C# is a .NET runtime monkey so I never even considered learning it.

Lar.

[Richard Robertson]

It gets "compiled" to MSIL. From there, it stays in MSIL until it gets run. Then the JIT compiler actually creates machine code out of it.