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Scripting to get more couch time

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by rapell

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I have recently discovered that writing scripts could reduce my daily quota of movement and time by up to 40%. I am now trying to learn VBS and Jscript but am finding both quite hard to understand. I have therefore chosen to go with one, and my choice is vbscript, but seems I am not made out to program, because 3 weeks down the road, and I cannot write a short script without opening a book. What is the best way I can learn and master scripting? -Don?t say hard work, am already doing that. Thanks

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by gralfus

Write a short script to do something, then keep playing with that small script and modify it to do other things, but keep backups of the original so you can see and study your progress.

I have a small booklet of Perl scripts I wrote and use that as a reference for other projects. If I am struggling with remembering how to do something, I can consult my previous scripts (which have lots of comments within the code) to remind me how to code something.

by ccollins

I've been learning vbscript for the last 11 months and I started by grabbing other people's scripts and trying to figure out how they worked. Drive mappings are the easiest because you can easily recognise them. I recommend EditPlus to modify scripts because it colour codes things and this makes it easier, as well. And I like www.devguru.com because it has the operations, and if you search google groups (microsoft.public.scripting.vbscript is the best) you can see real life examples.

by rcsoar4fun

Vbscript is not too bad to learn, but IMHO there are easier and more productive things to learn. Perl is very popular with a massive support base. Normally a question posted to a perl newsgroup will be answered within the hour. Its also a little more flexible and capable than some of ones you mentioned. My recommendation would be to download Active Perl from www.activestate.com, buy "Perl for Dummies" and "Perl Black Book" if you can find it. Work through the Dummies examples. It should take about a week, after that you should be able to write a lot of useful stuff.

Kristopher

by krobinson45

One of the most repetitive, mundane tasks I have to do is to create a profile for new users on Win2K workstations. This includes configuring their profile in Outlook, installing printers from the print server, and occasionally mapping drives although it is usually done thru the login script. A monkey of average intelligence could do this! I would love to figure out how to create a script that would prompt me for the username and possibly printers and then do the rest from there. Do you think this is a reasonable or better yet, doable aspiration? any ideas, suggestions would be appreciated!

Kathy

by matthew moran

Lack of scripting is the single biggest time-waster that afflicts technology professionals. VB Script is a great tool. Also, for logon scripts I shift between vbscript and kixtart. Kixtart is a bit more free-form and looks and feels more like a batch file language but has tremendous power.

Here is one of my scripting articles from InformIT:
http://www.informit.com/articles/article.asp?p=102209

Also, the advice to find and modify existing scripts is a good one. Go to the Microsoft Scripting Center for assistance with this.

There are also numerous sites on VBScript, kixtart, javascript, etc.

As you learn this type of automation, consider VBA (Microsoft Office's automation language) as well.

Below are two of my blogs about automation. The first has links to some scripting/automation resources.
http://blogs.ittoolbox.com/pm/career/archives/001235.asp

This one has some VBA (MS Office) code.
http://blogs.ittoolbox.com/pm/career/archives/001433.asp

You are on to a great idea to up your productivity. A few weeks is not enough time to give yourself when starting out. As you master this, you will learn other automation tools much more quickly.

Matthew Moran
http://www.cbtoolkit.com

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