Any bonofide programmers out there?

JRL · Post by **JRL** » Tue Sep 04, 2012 10:35 pm

I've always wondered how much Macro Scheduler gets used by people who have programming skills in alternative languages. (Implying that Macro Scheduler is a language?) I use MS for everything because I don't know anything else and it seems to be able to accomplish anything I've asked it to do.

Any programmer lurkers out there? log in and let us know what you think of MS in comparison to other languages.

EnderFFX · Post by **EnderFFX** » Wed Sep 05, 2012 3:31 am

Masters in Comp Sci here. I absolutely adore Macro Scheduler. I've created multiple quick and dirty programs that have been phenomenal. I use it sometimes as a programming language for small utilities instead of programming in other languages because it has such a quick turn around time, has a good debugger, and a very simple interface.

I recently wrote an automation process for generating hundreds of pdf reports with data from an Access database, in 48 hours and I could not have done it with another language so quickly.

CyberCitizen · Post by **CyberCitizen** » Wed Sep 05, 2012 4:19 am

I to also don't know any other languages, and have found MS easier to use. I have played around with Batch Files, AutoIt & VBS, however find that MS works better and breaches that gap between other programs.

MS makes it easy to develop tools, programs, scripts, what ever you want to call them.

Here are some examples of stuff I have used MS for.

http://youtu.be/XRRdLxY7d_M?hd=1

http://youtu.be/2S3LyjNMcxg?hd=1

http://youtu.be/mF4NpZOz6iA?hd=1

http://youtu.be/VJO722_GQyc?hd=1

PepsiHog · Post by **PepsiHog** » Tue Oct 16, 2012 2:42 pm

My nephew is learning java in high school now. So that peeked some curiosity. I started looking at C++ and Java. I haven't decided which I'd rather learn, yet. But there are a lot of commonalities between those languages and MS. Which makes sense, since Marcus has stated that MS follows the standard something or another of programming and blah blah blah. (Not an exact quote :O ) (In case you didn't catch that.)

Real programmer? What is a real programmer? I use to program in many forms of Basic. I have knowledge of other languages and minimal understanding and exposure. Are you a real programmer if you program in Basic? (in Basic I have extensive knowledge.)

What skill set makes a person a real programmer? I believe if you have an interest and are practicing writting in any language, including MS, you are a programmer.

Macro Scheduler is awesome. And like JRL states, can do pretty much anything you can imagine. Also, like JRL said, it is an extemely easy programming tool and environment. But there are advantages to using the base programming languages. Which I am not getting into here.

L8tr,
PepsiHog

Meryl · Post by **Meryl** » Wed Oct 17, 2012 4:52 pm

Would love to know if anyone using MS Scheduler who hasn't dabbled in BASIC, Javascript, etc. OK, HTML and CSS don't count. They're great things to know -- but they don't fall under programming.

I've played with BASIC, Javascript. Took a Java class and a computer math class. Hated the latter two and decided compsci / programming wasn't for me.

Jerry Thomas · Post by **Jerry Thomas** » Wed Oct 17, 2012 8:57 pm

In spite of what EnderFFX wrote (he is enlightened!), developers I have worked with typically have disdain for scripting (MS or any other script language / tool).

It seems to be the 'real men use (pick your language)' mentality.

But to echo other comments, I can whip out an 1 time use automation tool much faster than the developers can.

This is the 2nd company where I have used MS, and I love it!

AntoniusMomac · Post by **AntoniusMomac** » Wed Oct 17, 2012 10:51 pm

Meryl wrote:Would love to know if anyone using MS Scheduler who hasn't dabbled in BASIC, Javascript, etc.

I don't know if this counts, but I have to tell you all that being a former film-maker (student level) and avid tech geek (but no hacking ability) I went out and pursued a Masterâ€™s of Science in CIS. Parts of the program were 2 classes in C++, which I did very poorly in. Great professor, great school, and I loved the material, but I could not program in that language. So Iâ€™m not pragmatic, which is fine since I love the theory, but Iâ€™ll never be a very good programmer. Or so I thoughâ€¦

Fast forward a year; I was working as a business analyst (sudo system analyst of a sort) and I landed a semi-technical project to implement an Automated Software testing suite. I looked at a ton of options and I was so lucky to have stumbled on Macro Scheduler when I did. Not only was it the best tool to use, but the only tool that allowed for the GUI automation required by the system under test. I quickly tough myself how to program and debug on Macro Scheduler. I applied every concept that I had learned in C++ class (minus the classes, but you can think of macros and subroutines as such), and it worked so much better. Honestly when you can see what youâ€™re trying to accomplish on screen, and quickly I might add it makes so much more sense than being thrown into Visual studio and trying to code.

Having no preconceived notions of what programing â€œshould beâ€

Post by **Marcus Tettmar** » Thu Oct 18, 2012 12:36 pm

Jerry Thomas wrote:In spite of what EnderFFX wrote (he is enlightened!), developers I have worked with typically have disdain for scripting (MS or any other script language / tool).

It seems to be the 'real men use (pick your language)' mentality.

I've encountered this attitude many, many times. Of course these "real men" also take many days longer to reinvent the wheel. Or they end up telling their users that what they want is impossible. I've largely given up trying to sell Macro Scheduler to "pure programmers" as they prefer to do things the long way or just "don't get it".

PepsiHog · Post by **PepsiHog** » Sat Oct 20, 2012 1:10 am

Marcus says:

I've largely given up trying to sell Macro Scheduler to "pure programmers" as they prefer to do things the long way or just "don't get it".

Sidebar - For all my computer skills, I can't get the quote to indicate the person..?? What's the trick? Help please.

@Marcus,

Aren't you a pure programmer? Can you imagine yourself using MS and not being a pure programmer? I mean without the love for your baby, or allowing it to influence your answer (baby being MS). Say you found MS and had experience with some other programming, would you be solely happy using MS, or would you do both?

I'm just curious how you are wired.

PepsiHog

Post by **Marcus Tettmar** » Sat Oct 20, 2012 3:17 am

To be fair we DO have customers who are developers and we also have customers who are software houses and use Macro Scheduler to augment their own solutions. But Macro Scheduler was designed out the outset primarily for non-programmers.

There's also been "programming language wars" for years, and e.g. C++ developers will often laugh about Delphi/VB while Ruby developers might look down on PHP.

How am I wired? Well I obviously can't really imagine a world without Macro Scheduler. Macro Scheduler grew out of a need to simplify the automation of various tasks. I started out writing automations in a more traditional language but this became difficult to maintain and was long winded, so Macro Scheduler was born. So hopefully I'm a "pure" programmer who recognised the need for something to simplify development of automation tasks.

Half our business comes from writing scripts to automate tasks for customers. I write macros every day. For all kinds of processes. There's no way we could write these routines as quickly and as efficiently without Macro Scheduler, and that's one reason why people come to us and/or choose Macro Scheduler - it's faster and cheaper than using a traditional programming language. With Macro Scheduler you end up with smaller, more maintainable code.

Meryl · Post by **Meryl** » Sat Oct 20, 2012 1:44 pm

Besides -- with a name like Marcus ... you were practically meant to do macros. One letter difference

Me_again · Post by **Me_again** » Sun Oct 21, 2012 11:43 pm

Meryl wrote:Besides -- with a name like Marcus ... you were practically meant to do macros. One letter difference

In that case, being in the UK, he has to drive one of these

PepsiHog · Post by **PepsiHog** » Sat Nov 17, 2012 5:18 pm

Hey Marcus,

Just reading these posts and a question for you came to mind.

You said half your business comes from writting macros to automate something. So I was curious. Do you automate for non-MS users?

That is, I am a customer w/o MS. But I hire you to write an exe to automate a task. Will you? Have you?

Do you have programs that you wrote in your early years that are not related to anything MS? (That a person can DL) i.e. Freeware or Shareware or otherwise.

Post by **Marcus Tettmar** » Sun Nov 18, 2012 6:18 pm

We write and supply Macro Scheduler code for people. Those people usually already have Macro Scheduler or purchase it to run the scripts we supply them, so that they can modify, maintain, schedule them etc.

The only other product we offer which is not related to Macro Scheduler is ClipMagic: http://www.clipmagic.com

kh_kevin · Post by **kh_kevin** » Thu Dec 13, 2012 1:35 pm

i dunno if i'd consider myself a "pure programmer", but i graduated w/a math and cs degree. in past jobs predominantly used vb6, vba, vb.net. learned objective-c (iOS) over the last year or so.

i think macro scheduler is great. at first i used it because windows task manager or whatever it is just wasn't cutting it. processes wouldn't get called, or if they did, sporadically. macro scheduler is rock solid in this regard. eventually i found myself using the scripting capabilities more and more, and will use it to automate anything that traditional approaches cannot (or take more effort to).

my current approach is that if whatever software/process i'm automating has an API, i will use that first. for instance, vba for excel. .NET for pdfs (setting bookmarks, putting multiple files together, etc). .NET for data-heavy applications that need to interface w/sql server. however, there are many things that can't be done easily, like web automation.

as an example, one of our global branches has data that we need to get. for some reason, even though we're the same company, they can't provide support for us to directly access their database or to provide us files generated to our specifications automatically (say via FTP or something). so we have to use the available web application to download reports. this is tedious and annoying. in comes macro scheduler. i can use web recorder to make my inputs and options selections as stable as possible, use the FindImagePos function to export my data, then at the end call my Excel workbook to finish the rest of the automation process in its native environment.

Any bonofide programmers out there?

Any bonofide programmers out there?

Hello

Cooler than water

Hello