Chapter 1
Introducing IDEAScript
You've just completed the same analysis for the fiftieth time and wonder if there isn't an easier way to get the job done. Yes, using IDEA is fast and easy, but there must be a way to make things faster still. Of course, you can try to find some way to improve your own efficiency or try to perform the analysis a few less times, but there are limitations to that approach and they often require additional work on your part. Why not have someone else, or more importantly, something else, do the work for you? That's what scripting is all about. This book tells you everything you need to know in order to make the computer work for you, rather than you work for it. In this chapter, you discover just how much benefit you can obtain by spending a few hours learning to tell the computer what to do. As you go through this chapter, you learn how to:
- Understand how automation can make working with IDEA easier.
- Consider the ways in which you can use automation.
- Decide which forms of automation to pursue first.
- Determine how your skills can help you use automation best.
Understanding Automation
The computer community will use all kinds of technical terms you don't understand to describe scripting. In fact, the word scripting itself sounds foreign and technical. What this book really describes is automation, and you use automation every day. When you go to the gas station and fill your car with gas, you're using automation. After all, you don't have to pump ...
