title: How do I send & receives Telegram messages programmatically?
body: <p>I want to create an app that sends telegram messages to different people by phone number, and/or telegram id.</p>
  
  <p>I've heard about the "Telegram Bot API", but from my understanding it has some limitations (like it can't send messages unless users authorize it and send the first message to it, and it doesn't support sending messages using phone number)</p>
  
  <p>And there is the "Telegram API", which looks like a lot of work and coding..? I'm a 1 man developer and I don't want to spend years to create a Telegram app from scratch that talks to telegram servers and does all the protocols and then I have to update it constantly and so on and so fourth.</p>
  
  <p>I just want something that is easy to code &amp; maintain, and can use my telegram account to programmatically send/receive messages. That's it. Something like :</p>
  
  <pre><code>send.message(phone number, message)
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>or some sort of REST API that let's me authenticate my telegram account and then provides methods that I can use to send messages to contacts.</p>
  
  <p>Any ideas on how I can implement this? Any pointers would be appreciated!</p>