(x post from the subreddit)
I think android automations are really awesome, and I have a lot of them, but I really hate making them.
While all the apps, especially MacroDroid are full of features, the actual act of programming is always painful for me.
Maybe it's not fair. I'm a programmer by trade, and text editors and ides had decades to evolve by the people who love to be lazy.
Touch screens are relatively new, and are much less efficient than kb and mouse. Since textual programming is practically impossible, we have to use visual programming which is again underdeveloped and basically requires anyone to start from scratch.
With that being said, I think Macrodroid (and other apps, have much much room to grow in the ux field before we talk about integration and features.
Here are my pain points, of course as a programmer I know how hard it is to actually implement new features, this is just something to think about.
Undo/Redo
Oops I accidentally deleted a block with lots of config What can I do? Well, if I haven't saved yet I can discard my changes and maybe save it at the cost of my other work. That's not great.
Undo and redo should be a base feature to every program that encourages you to experiment. It saves time and saves code 2.
Version control
Like undo/redo, but for everything.
Every programmer today uses it. being able to travel through history, branch, see when what happened and why.
We have backups, which I guess are better than nothing but just aren't enough.
I'll go a step further and say that since macrodroid programs, even huge ones, are so relatively small in size that literally every change should be a "commit" (in addition to normal named commits). Full history in all directions
Long press is useless
Long pressing should be quick edit. or entering selection mode, or have it be configurable. instead it opens the help menu, which is maybe useful for beginners,but since the input grammer is touch or hold touch, it's just wasteful and inefficient. I find myself holding it excepting it to do something, but it never does.
someone mentioned slide menus, like in email apps, and yeah this is perfect
multiple selection
not much to say here. hate doing things one at a time. let us select multiple blocks and delete or move or anything them as one
expressions
In macrodroid you have magics to insert to replace variables and you have some operations you can do, but it could be much more.
Doing simple ops in text, like a ternary operator, combining string operations, etc can save so many blocks that are annoying to use one at a time
This is something that automate does pretty well: https://llamalab.com/automate/doc/expression.html
I think it should be taken further, and have a small embedded language for those things. similar to how mustache or jinja templates are
so many clicks
want to edit an if? well press it scroll to configure press the inner block scroll to configure again finally
having to go through all of the menus every time you edit something it's just friction
text editing
I said that programming textually on a phone is not good. that's still true. but often it's so much easier to tweak a small thing with a text editor.
Ideally we will have a documented format to work with, but even if not, just letting us do it behind an advanced flag or something could help. right now its doing a back up, editing, and restoring.
that's what I have for now I'll probably make a similar post for automate soon tasker is beyond help IMO
I wish there was an android automaton thing where I feel like the app helps me rather than hinders me
I was thinking about node red maybe, but the interface is unusable on mobile so I'll have to develop a responsive theme or something
Share your thoughts
I think android automations are really awesome, and I have a lot of them, but I really hate making them.
While all the apps, especially MacroDroid are full of features, the actual act of programming is always painful for me.
Maybe it's not fair. I'm a programmer by trade, and text editors and ides had decades to evolve by the people who love to be lazy.
Touch screens are relatively new, and are much less efficient than kb and mouse. Since textual programming is practically impossible, we have to use visual programming which is again underdeveloped and basically requires anyone to start from scratch.
With that being said, I think Macrodroid (and other apps, have much much room to grow in the ux field before we talk about integration and features.
Here are my pain points, of course as a programmer I know how hard it is to actually implement new features, this is just something to think about.
Undo/Redo
Oops I accidentally deleted a block with lots of config What can I do? Well, if I haven't saved yet I can discard my changes and maybe save it at the cost of my other work. That's not great.
Undo and redo should be a base feature to every program that encourages you to experiment. It saves time and saves code 2.
Version control
Like undo/redo, but for everything.
Every programmer today uses it. being able to travel through history, branch, see when what happened and why.
We have backups, which I guess are better than nothing but just aren't enough.
I'll go a step further and say that since macrodroid programs, even huge ones, are so relatively small in size that literally every change should be a "commit" (in addition to normal named commits). Full history in all directions
Long press is useless
Long pressing should be quick edit. or entering selection mode, or have it be configurable. instead it opens the help menu, which is maybe useful for beginners,but since the input grammer is touch or hold touch, it's just wasteful and inefficient. I find myself holding it excepting it to do something, but it never does.
someone mentioned slide menus, like in email apps, and yeah this is perfect
multiple selection
not much to say here. hate doing things one at a time. let us select multiple blocks and delete or move or anything them as one
expressions
In macrodroid you have magics to insert to replace variables and you have some operations you can do, but it could be much more.
Doing simple ops in text, like a ternary operator, combining string operations, etc can save so many blocks that are annoying to use one at a time
This is something that automate does pretty well: https://llamalab.com/automate/doc/expression.html
I think it should be taken further, and have a small embedded language for those things. similar to how mustache or jinja templates are
so many clicks
want to edit an if? well press it scroll to configure press the inner block scroll to configure again finally
having to go through all of the menus every time you edit something it's just friction
text editing
I said that programming textually on a phone is not good. that's still true. but often it's so much easier to tweak a small thing with a text editor.
Ideally we will have a documented format to work with, but even if not, just letting us do it behind an advanced flag or something could help. right now its doing a back up, editing, and restoring.
that's what I have for now I'll probably make a similar post for automate soon tasker is beyond help IMO
I wish there was an android automaton thing where I feel like the app helps me rather than hinders me
I was thinking about node red maybe, but the interface is unusable on mobile so I'll have to develop a responsive theme or something
Share your thoughts
