Blueprism-like spying and bot development
There is a free version of Blue Prism now :) Also Blue Prism uses win32, active accessibility and UI Automation which is a newer for of the older active accessibility.
To do this yourself without looking into Blue Prism you would need to know how to use UIA with C#/VB.new or C++. There are libraries however given that Blue Prism now has a free version I would recommend using that.  Anything specific can be developed withing a code stage within Blue Prism.
Blueprism gives the possibility to spy elements (like buttons and textboxes) in both web-browsers and windows applications. How can I spy (windows-based only) applications using Python, R, Java, C++, C# or other, anything but not Blueprism, preferrably opensource.

For web-browsers, I know how to do this, without being an expert. Using Python or R, for example, I can use Selenium or RSelenium, to spy elements of a website using different ways such as CSS selector, xpath, ID, Class Name, Tag, Text etc.
But for Applications, I have no clue. BluePrism has mainly two different App spying modes which are WIN32 and Active Accessibility. How can I do this type of spying and interacting with an application outside of Blueprism, preferrably using an opensource language?

(only interested in windows-based apps for now)
The aim is of course to create robots able to navigate the apps as a human would do.