On Scripting
Graham Lee writes of The death of scripting and The paradox of scripting.
But how can scripting be dead? There’s bash, and powershell, and ruby, and…even Perl is still popular among sysadmins. There’s never been a better time to be a programmer or other IT professional trying to automate a task.
True, but there’s never been a worse time for someone who doesn’t care about computers to use a computer to automate a task. Apps are in-your-face “experiences” to be “used”, and for the most part can’t be glued together.
There are counter-examples, of course — the apps I work on (Mac versions of OmniFocus and OmniOutliner) are highly scriptable. But the trend toward silos, sandboxing, and highly-controlled experiences is clear.
(First thing I did was look to see if Slack has a scripting dictionary. Of course not. Neither does HipChat. Apps these days.)
If you’re thinking about adding AppleScript support to your app, read these articles from objc.io last year:
Making Your Mac App’s Data Scriptable
In the first of these, I write:
When adding AppleScript support — which is also JavaScript support, as of OS X 10.10 — it’s best to start with your app’s data. Scripting isn’t a matter of automating button clicks; it’s about exposing the model layer to people who could use your app in their workflows.
While that’s usually a small minority of users, they’re power users — the kind of people who recommend apps to friends and family. They blog and tweet about apps, and people listen to them. They can be your app’s biggest evangelists.
Overall, the best reason to add scripting support is that it’s a matter of professionalism. But it doesn’t hurt that the effort is worth the reward.