As a trained engineer/programmer (although my actual job hasnât required those skills for many years), Iâve always felt that Shortcuts was âjust not rightâ and counter-intuitive to my programming skills.
Refreshing to hear a similar view from Dr Drang and appreciate the MPU hosts âtoleratingâ his point of view with only polite disagreement.
Once upon a time, I was (like many people here), the worldâs best programmer!
Decades have passed, but I still cling to that.
Shortcuts bewilders me. So much to learn before you get traction, and itâs so counterintuitive. It feels like something I would have played with when I was a kid, like BASIC, just for the fun of it. But Iâm not a kid now, and itâs far too much effort to play with it, for the return, and I donât trust that itâll work properly.
Which makes me sad 
TBH.
I wonder if it would be easier to learn if I wasnât, once, a computer scientist. Maybe without that background, Iâd find it easier to dabble. Dunno.
Wait, so does Dr. Drang like or not like Shortcuts? Itâs still not clear to me. LOL.
I can understand his point of view. Dealing with a drag-n-drop visual editor instead of programmatic code is frustrating, especially when you expect Shortcuts to behave a certain way but encounter a different behavior. For what itâs worth, I always thought that Automatorâs drag-n-drop editor worked better.
A wish list for Shortcuts would be to permit a parallel and equivalent âcode modeâ so we could simply type the script. Iâm not sure which language would be best â AppleScript? JavaScript like OmniGroup uses? Python would make a lot of people happy! Or a new âSwiftScriptâ that makes more sense for modern macOS? A tabbed bar at the top could toggle between visual mode and code mode.
To be honest, I wouldnât be surprised if a âcode modeâ already existed on the dev side of things (for the Shortcuts developers). Most developers make tools for their own apps to help debug things or to build other parts of the app (like content) more easily. Each shortcut has to have a data structure behind it, and this data structure could be edited visually (as it is now) or textually (as could be permitted by some kind of âcode modeâ).
I like the bit where he said he doesnât much care for productivity because what does it matterâŚnow he is retiredâŚMy thoughts entirely
That made me smile.
As someone with a foot in the working world and another in the path towards retirement, I can emphatically disagree - productivity tools let me spend more time âdoing nothingâ faster by getting the annoying but required tasks done as fast as possible.
I agree with the group here and understand Dr. Drangâs frustration with Shortcuts. I am a Software Engineer as well and always find myself having to look up concepts that donât remotely match my expected paradigms. Things I would expect to work a certain way end up very different. This happens consistently when Iâm wanting to do something fairly complex in Shortcuts. Iâve also noticed that a Shortcut built on my Mac doesnât consistently work on my iPhone, which then steers me away from using it if I can build and run it on any device but canât trust it everywhere.
I get Davidâs point that there is value for a lot folks doing simple automations. I think the problem is a lot of engineers try to go deep with something out of the shoot and get quickly disillusioned when things donât make sense or help simplify in a naturally intuitive way.
I love MPU and I think I like Dr. Drang but this episode sent me running for the fast forward button and eventually my audiobook. Iâm curious about the part of the MPU audience that wants to spend time listening to other people talk in detail about their phone color choice and case-buying experience. Then hear opinions on AI tools he hasnât used? shrug
(Iâm also a big believer that not every episode needs to work for every listener! On to next week for me!)
I enjoyed this episode. Dr. Drang is charming and pleasantly passed the time for me while walking the dog.
I am definitely not a programmer or a software developer, but I have done some things with Keyboard Maestro and find Shortcuts super-confusing. Iâve never had a shortcut reliably work right for me, and I donât bother with them.
Dr. Drang mentioned using KeyCue because he needs help remembering the keyboard shortcuts. Is anyone else in the MPU community using this and if so what are your thoughts?
Itâs a bit expensive at $39, but it has a free trial of sorts.
Honestly, this seems like a feature that should be part of Settings in the OS (listing all shortcuts, not just the ones created via the Keyboard control panel pane).
I just listened, and note that Dr. Drang misspoke. KeyCue by Ergonis is not a free app. There is a similarly named app, KeyClu, which is free. I found KeyCue to be the more polished app, and I like that you can add your own hotkeys to it. Note I purchased it a while ago as a one time purchase when it cost a bit less than it does now.
A new app, XCut, currently in beta, is a different take on this type of app. Pricing info is not yet available. A nice feature is that unlike KeyCue or KeyClu, once invoked it stays visible as a floating window, and updates to show the shortcuts for the currently focused app.
I was disappointed by the false advertising of this episode. I was looking forward to a discussion of his use of Mathematica and in one hour and forty-two minutes, there was less than five minutes on that topic.
According to the KeyCue pricing page, itâs also as available for $19.99 a year. The $39 price is for a perpetual license that only covers minor updates.
KeyCue is also available as part of a Setapp subscription.
Thanks, Tim. Thatâs valuable information, literally. The developerâs website doesnât mention that the app is available on SetApp on their pricing page. I understand why they donât, but I was going to forgo using the app based on the relative pricing of Typinator and KeyCue.