| It does seem like we've realized that GUIs are not really the most automation-friendly way to interact with programs. But there are a lot of nice macro tools out there still. For Windows, there is a macro scripting language Autohotkey [0], which has powerful recording GUIs built on it [1]. Although it doesn't support application-specific hooks that I'm aware of, it does allow introspection into the rendered GUI of the application, so you can "click a button" instead of "click a pixel". OS X has Keyboard Maestro [2], which I've heard is good. Also, many keyboards have macro recording built in. My Ducky keyboard can record and save macros with no custom software/driver needed. (the macros can even include mouse clicks, but that's a little janky.) As a final note, I think the place I've seen macro recording still used the most is in gaming. In most other areas of computing, it's seen as preferable to make a special-purpose utility to solve a problem instead of building layers of automation on top of a more general-purpose tool. (btw, this is just based on my personal experience -- I love automation so I've never been far from the macro-space. I'm not trying to argue against your point.) [0]: https://www.autohotkey.com/ [1]: https://www.macrocreator.com/ [2]: https://www.keyboardmaestro.com/main/ |
Yeah, in general the opinion seems to be "you want to manually do stuff, use a GUI. If you want automation, use the API of either a server-side backend or CLI tool", but there is a huge segment of users that are between that. Imagine power users that don't know how to program. For them to be able to quickly record > playback some common thing they do, would save a lot of time and be valuable