In praise of scripting

For years, proponents of graphical user interfaces (GUIs) have been trying to lead firms away from scripting languages. They have ridiculed command-line programs as clumsy, and so passe compared with glossy button-riddled interfaces. Well, I believe scripting languages have a lot to offer, especially to firms automating business processes.

I was reminded of this when working on a project at a big European firm recently. This firm is trying to glue together a mix of Word files, Excel files, Project files and miscellaneous others of various generations. The documents are almost all very simple but staff are forced to use various GUIs to generate them. The whole thing is time-consuming, error-prone and highly resistant to automation or data mining.

Of course the main point about the really successful modern scripting languages such as Tcl/Tk, Perl, Python and PHP is that they are spectacularly good at prototyping and automating processes and they are completely portable across Windows and Linux environments.

An astonishingly high level of custom-built automation can quickly be achieved through a suitable choice of a portable text-based document format, HTML or one of its more sophisticated siblings, maybe SQL database access, and a few hundred lines of scripting language to glue it all together. Some of these languages, such as Tcl/Tk or Perl/Tk, can also build a portable GUI, so users can have a simple purpose-built graphical interface sitting on top.

Let me give you some examples: a sophisticated multi-currency dual-entry accounting system in 5,000 lines of Tcl/Tk; a complete live multi-user track and field results management system with automatic report generation, customised emailing and web-updating in 1,500 lines of PHP with MySQL; automation of many of the requirements of the widely used Carnegie-Mellon Capability Maturity Model for software development in 2,500 lines of Tcl/Tk and 1,500 lines of shell script. These are projects requiring only a few person weeks, including the generation of a GUI.

Custom tool building fuelled the industrial revolution; we may see similar progress again.

On a separate topic, the new Windows XP Service Pack 2 may or may not alleviate the security problems of Internet Explorer, and limit the possibility of clandestine access. However, spurred on by recent warnings of the dire security of Microsoft's technology, I thought I would try some alternative browsers.

I downloaded a beta copy - version 0.92 - of Mozilla Firefox, and a personal copy of ZoneAlarm. Why oh why did I not do this sooner?

Firefox is gratifyingly robust on even very Windows-centric sites, and is better at controlling pop-ups than Explorer. ZoneAlarm is equally impressive and together they have improved my Windows browsing experience immeasurably.