Cloaker VS autopy

I don't really know how many users I have, so I don't know how "meaningful" my projects are, but I have found some of them posted on French, Chinese, Greek, Russian blogs etc., so hopefully they fill some people's needs besides my own.

https://github.com/spieglt/flyingcarpet

https://cloaker.mobi

https://github.com/spieglt/cloaker

https://github.com/spieglt/whatfiles

https://github.com/spieglt/winage

I learned to program because I was frustrated that after working in IT consulting for several years, I still had no idea how computers worked. I started with "Learn Python the Hard Way" and "Automate the Boring Stuff with Python". Then got a job doing some Windows consulting stuff, and they said they'd hire me as a software engineer if I learned Go, which was a pretty easy step from Python. I'd tried to learn programming as a kid several times and always found it too frustrating. I started working on side projects as a way to learn new languages, improve my resume, and scratch my own itches. The hardest part was coming up with ideas for useful/worthwhile projects. I was super frustrated one day that the easiest way to get a file between two machines that were right beside each other was sending them out to the internet via Google Drive or Dropbox, which made me want to write "cross-platform AirDrop", which became Flying Carpet. If you find yourself wanting a simple piece of software that seems like it should already exist, that's a great project idea.

I wrote a dead simple file encryption utility for this sort of purpose: https://github.com/spieglt/cloaker

Reciprocally, it's just amazing how much better AutoHotKey is at scripting the computer is than everything else is. The language was clearly never the reason why AHK persisted.

There's works like AutoPy (https://github.com/autopilot-rs/autopy) and AutoPilot-rs (https://github.com/autopilot-rs/autopilot-rs), but they offer like 1/100th the capabilities AHK does.

Personally I think this kind of computer-control is the perfect environment for teaching computing. Rather than writing apps or webapps, I feel like the idea of just writing code to do what you the user would do anyways, but better, is a fantastic introduction to computing & programming. In my ideal world, we'd have an EVE Online server that specifically re-enables the game-client's python interpretter (and periodically does total wipes), so folks can learn to program by scripting not just their desktop, but a complex & interesting game, via it's rich api.

Autopy, a python library to control mouse and keyboard (I used it to play clicker heroes and automate ascensions, was great. I also used multiple X sessions in Linux so it will run in parallel to other keyboard/mouse sessions) https://github.com/autopilot-rs/autopy