Using Ruby to automate with Applescript

I can’t quite count the number of times I’ve thought, “Now this might be an ideal task to automate with Applescript.” The problem is taking the time to pick up yet another language — albeit one as simple as Applescript, it’s not exactly a skill I need to keep current.

As it turns out, I don’t need to learn Applescript — or become frustrated by its relative paucity of capabilities. Matt Neuburg points out how to use Ruby to automate your Applescript tasks, and even more interesting to me personally is some partial integration between Python and Applescript (although it’s incomplete nature makes it less attractive).

Incidentally, while poking around the MacPython site I ran into EVE, an incredible looking massively multiplayer game written in, you guessed it, Python. As I get to know the language more I’m coming to admire it as a truly well-balanced and efficient language that can scale as robustly as J2EE. It gives the flexibility to quickly prototype complicated web sites, yet the forward-thinking design features to make those prototypes upwardly-compatible with production systems. And at the other end of the spectrum highly fault-tolerant, performant software systems — such as EVE or, for that matter, Google — are evidence of its scalability.