The Art of the Bodge: How I Made The Emoji Keyboard

Tom Scott
6 HN recommenders · recommended in 6 months, 2015–2024
YouTube
3.5M views · 11 years ago · talk · evergreen

Tom Scott explains how he built an emoji keyboard out of a cheap keyboard, custom key labels and AutoHotkey scripting on Windows. The talk uses it to argue for the art of the bodge, a quick, ugly solution that works well enough to get things done.

HN people love it for the line that AutoHotkey is a bodge that helps you make other bodges, and cite it as a defense of pragmatic hacking.

“a bodge that helps you make other bodges”
PrototypingInput devices & novel interfaces
#tomscott#bodge#autohotkey#customkeyboard#hacking#emoji

11 comments from Hacker News

l
@lcnPylGDnU4H9OF2022 · in “Software I’m thankful for (2021)”
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
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d
@dijit2020 · in “Jira Is a Microcosm of What’s Broken in Software Development”
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
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m
@modernerd2020 · in “In Praise of AutoHotKey”
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.]
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g
@gk12018 · in “The Art of the Bodge: How I Made the Emoji Keyboard (2015) [video]”
Submitted the video to Hacker News.
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q
@qwertyuiop9242016 · in “The Art of the Bodge”
Submitted the video to Hacker News.
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p
@pavel_lishin2015 · in “The Art of the Bodge: How I Made the Emoji Keyboard”
Submitted the video to Hacker News.
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a
@avidseeker2024 · in “Emotional about X11: I'm creating a pure X11 “emoji keyboard””
Reminds me of Tom Scott's "Art of Bodge up" video where he attempts to make an emoji keyboard on Windows. ▶ this video It's funny at the end he says "and don't ever suggest me I use Linux, just don't." I felt he expected it to be really hard project on Linux, while iterally his project is a single keyboard layout file.
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j
@jedimastert2021 · in “Windows Terminal Quake Mode”
Auto Hotkey is surprisingly powerful Here's Tom Scott talking about how he used AHK and Lua to make a keyboard for every emoji ▶ this video
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j
@jedimastert2020 · in “In Praise of AutoHotKey”
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
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m
@modernerd2018 · in “How IBM’s ThinkPad Became a Design Icon (2017)”
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 ).
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s
@swaggyBoatswain2018 · in “Setting up a second keyboard for more shortcuts in Emacs”
With lua + autohotkey scripts in windows this is definitely possible the last time I checked. You run a luascript on another keyboard mapped to a generic key, luascript inputs that as the proper text-based language There's a tomscott video on it ▶ this video Checkout Teran van Hemert (linustechtips editor) for some potential ideas too. He's got crazy macro schemas, I've used a couple of his and there great. All windows based as well though. link Mac, I can only assume its something you would write in applescript. But maybe you find some interesting ideas there. I found something called "link" that might be of interest to you
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