You can do whatever with PowerShell. Also, PowerShell Core (based on .Net Core) is cross-platform (Windows, Linux, and macOS).
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ActiveWords is not free, but is quite powerful. It sits between the keyboard driver and Windows, so you can type a trigger word anywhere to activate your macro–hence, “active words.”
It will do text substitution including rich text, graphics, HTML, and other formatted text, but can also launch applications and drive them.
$10 this was written in AHK.
EDIT: To achieve what they demo, all one has to do in ahk is this:
:*:someword::replaced word or sentence
or
:*:btw::by the way
It’s so simple and free. Thanks for sharing @RyanC
So cool you can replicate that in AHK, which is just a kick-ass swiss army knife.
ActiveWords is actually a full code stack and was implemented down near the keyboard driver similar to accessibility software (its been around quite awhile).
Thank you @fischgeek so much for the code sample. I’ll be busy this weekend scripting away my typos 
Check this guy out:
The following script uses hotstrings to correct about 4700 common English misspellings on-the-fly.
I think it’s a drawback that it is so low level, rather than a desireable feature.
What drawbacks do you see?
Software at this level is riskier from a security and a stabilität standpoint.
Sadly my work has blocked Windows Subsystem for Linux.
I never replied with what I do. This is basically what I do as my job… work with enterprise Microsoft systems (on-premises and cloud). Most of what I do is PowerShell. I have used Microsoft Identity Manager to automatically take feeds from HR systems, create users, provision mailboxes, set licenses, apply roles within applications, etc. In the past, I did tons of Batch and VB Script, but PowerShell is the best (and is open source and also available for macOS/Linux). I use it for work with Azure and Office 365. As far as tools go, I have used things like AutoIT which is in the same vein as AutoHotKey.
I would love to see some of the above mentioned platforms, Flow in particular, get some love on the podcast!
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+1 for suggesting C# for automation. Can you provide examples of things you’ve used it for?
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Evidently this thread is not very active, but I’ve loved WinBatch since the mid-90s. It used to be $500 for the whole set including the compiler, but ownership has changed and you can now get it for about $70. It’s not entry-level, there is no “wizard” or drag-&-drop. It’s BASIC-style scripting, but you can automate pretty much anything. Well over 2000 commands and dozens of free extender DLLs available that let you do anything from control lab equipment to work with photos and the web. There’s a free version (nag screen) that includes a pretty good tutorial.
I’d recommend it (and I often do) to any Windows user.
+1 for File Juggler - would definitely recommend.