I've recently had an argument with a friend who saw a video on somebody using simple programmable mouse operations to manipulate his mouse into clicking on things in game while that person is away from their computer. The individual in this video was using this process to craft large quantities of things while away from the game.

My first quandary is, is this botting? Typically when one thinks of a bot, it is something that performs much more complex operations, such as running around the game and gathering. Since this mouse macro only actually performs 3 clicks on a cycle in the game is it complex enough to even be considered a bot?

The second (and perhaps most important) question is, is this cheating?

The point of me posting this question is because I cannot convince this friend that what he is thinking of doing is, in fact, cheating. I'm hoping the responses to this post will help me dissuade him (assuming my belief that this is cheating is even correct).