Tom Scott
4 HN recommenders · recommended in 7 months, 2018–2024
17:15 · 3.5M views · Sep 24, 2015
Tom Scott explains how he built his emoji keyboard, which turned out to be a series of bodged-together tools including AutoHotkey and LuaMacros. He tells stories about the value of quick-and-dirty solutions.
HN links it as a charming defense of bodging and of AutoHotkey, and as the go-to example when custom keyboards or hotkey hacks come up.
8 comments from Hacker News
AutoHotKey (in addition to WSL and VS Code) was enough to make me Windows-curious and eventually try a Windows laptop again after 10+ years on Mac. I first found out about AHK via Tom Scott's similar ode here: this video He describes it as “a bodge that helps you make other bodges”, which is beautifully put. [For those outside the UK, a “bodge” is a clumsy hack or repair.]
Fun AutoHotKey abuse: Tom Scott's emoji keyboard[0]. It's every single emoji (at the time of recording) on 14 full keyboards with 1,000s of hand-placed bespoke stickers. He goes into more detail here[1], but it's beautiful. [0]: [LINK] [1]: this video
Never underestimate the art of the bodge, it's quite literally keeping the world ticking over, perfection has a place but it is rare and fleeting. I saw a good talk on it from Tom Scott some time ago[0] which I think is relevant. [0]: this video
I can't disagree, even if I would prefer something else. Easily the most compelling argument I've heard for Windows is Tom Scott's: this video .
Yes, there is the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), which is a compatibility layer for running Linux binaries natively on Windows: [LINK] [LINK] [LINK] I haven't switched to Windows 10 full-time yet, but WSL works remarkably well whenever I've tried it. Cmder ( [LINK] ) and ConEmu ( [LINK] ) are pretty decent terminal emulators and Terminus ( [LINK] ) looks promising too. (It's hard to beat iTerm, though.) My other concern with Windows 10 was security and viruses. Last time I used Windows every day (~1999!) that was a huge concern, but it seems to be less of one now. Most seem to consider using the standard Windows-supplied virus checker just fine if you're not torrenting dodgy stuff and opening strange email attachments. The following guide (from the @SwiftOnSecurity twitter author) was helpful: [LINK] It contains much the same advice for Windows that you'd expect to see for keeping macOS secure too — keep stuff up-to-date, encrypt your drives, don't try to disable User Account Control or Device Guard (like Gatekeeper on Mac). I've found that chocolatey ( [LINK] ) is a great replacement for brew, Laragon ( [LINK] ) is a good alternative to Valet, and Autohotkey ( [LINK] ) is unrivaled for general system automation. (See Tom Scott waxing lyrical about Windows and AHK here: this video ).