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LiveCode is a modern day HyperCard (2019)

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Re: LiveCode is a modern day HyperCard (2019)

#41

Post by zubairq »

peckrob wrote: post #20
emmanueloga_ wrote: post #6

looks more of a modern day visual basic no? (no snark, VB was cool!)

I was thinking the same thing. Man I miss VB6. For rapidly prototyping an idea, I have yet to find anything that was as good as VB6. Drag a button, write code. Want to change things about the button? Use properties, that live update the GUI without recompiling. It was so simple that a reasonably intelligent person could grasp it in an afternoon, but in the hands of a capable developer could do some very impressive th…

Appshare.co does that, drag controls onto a form, edit code and run

Re: LiveCode is a modern day HyperCard (2019)

#43

Post by athenot »

badsectoracula wrote: post #39
paleogizmo wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I added the weasel-word "spiritually" for that reason. If I had a teenager wanting to make a gui program I would point them to PSG as it doesn't require much conceptual understanding nor many lines of code to bang something together. There are still graphical programming environments out there and there is even a general one in the form of LabVIEW community edition. However, they just don't have the network effect of…

But HyperCard wasn't really for making GUI programs - i do not even think many people who used it viewed themselves as programmers (at least not any more than people who make complex stuff on Excel do). Sure, you can place buttons and input fields, but it was more of a hyperlinked painting program that also allowed you to enter interactive elements. I think it was closer to something like Powerpoint (which i think al…

OmniGraffle can be used to scratch some of the many needs that HyperCard fufilled.

Shapes can trigger not just navigation or show/hide but also AppleScripts. Can be quite useful to throw together a quick MVP, which HyperCard was awesome for.

Re: LiveCode is a modern day HyperCard (2019)

#44

Post by ianbicking »

JoblessWonder wrote: post #12

I'll take any opportunity to ask HN what sort of "Hypercard" like options are out there to get kids into programming. I still have many memories of creating my own "Choose Your Adventure" type game and having the other kids in my class be amazed at what I was able to create. It really stuck with me.

Scratch definitely gets the IDE aspect right: you can edit code, images, create and edit sounds, do layout, all in a sensible combined interface. Something like PySimpleGUI totally misses this point, and juggling different kinds of files will be too complicated for kids.

What Scratch doesn't get right is the card aspect. It's like Hypercard with one card, and the patterns involved in making basic shifts from one mode to another, or one level to another, involve lots of global messages and setup code. It's really bad. Making a Choose Your Own Adventure program will be very hard! It's my biggest disappointment.

https://arcade.makecode.com is quite nice, but is more "program" like than Scratch, where I think Hypercard is more "document" like than Scratch... and so MakeCode isn't exactly a move in the right direction. MakeCode is better for games, but not good for things that aren't games. Scratch is also natural for making videos (Flash-reminiscent), documents, silly music players, etc.

Re: LiveCode is a modern day HyperCard (2019)

#45

Post by zeppelin101 »

paleogizmo wrote: post #5

In the spirit of HN contrarian comments, I'd say the closest thing spiritually to a modern-day HyperCard is PySimpleGUI: https://github.com/PySimpleGUI Previously the closest thing to HyperCard was WinForms, which PSG borrows heavily from. PSG is probably the fastest way for anyone moderately familar with python to throw together an ugly-but-servicable GUI program and I reach for it when I'm in a hurry. The two trick…

Thank you for this. I had given up on Python GUI frameworks a while ago. I tried this out and it lives up to its name. Dead simple and does the job.

Re: LiveCode is a modern day HyperCard (2019)

#46

Post by hoistbypetard »

soapdog wrote: post #2

Hey I'm the author of that page, AMA.

Thanks for posting it. I don't think I've looked at this set of tools since it was Metacard.

I love these threads every time they come up. Mostly because I loved HyperCard.

Without fail, everything suggested as a modern HyperCard replacement really nails at least one element of its spirit and really misses something else.

I think this is one of the closer ones overall. Its adherence to the stack model is much closer than the others and its programming language certainly is closer to HyperTalk than any other I recall, besides AppleScript.

Your walk through showcases the similarity really nicely.

It even looks like you can write the spiritual equivalent of an XCMD.

I think where LiveCode misses the boat is the packaging step necessary for distributing your "Apps". With HyperCard, we passed around stack files. And unless we took some special steps to prevent it, they were also the preferred form for editing our programs. So if I gave my stack to you, you could run it as a program. But you could also edit and change it.

That default, where I could throw the exact thing I was working on onto a floppy and hand it to my dad, who could run it on his machine but also edit it if he wanted to is something I really haven't seen replicated.

Maybe that's a side of HyperCard that just can't be recreated today. Or just shouldn't, until the tooling to run the "stacks" gets distributed by default with a major OS.

Thanks for causing a fun re-exploration of a space that was really influential for me.

Re: LiveCode is a modern day HyperCard (2019)

#47

Post by hoistbypetard »

badsectoracula wrote: post #39
paleogizmo wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I added the weasel-word "spiritually" for that reason. If I had a teenager wanting to make a gui program I would point them to PSG as it doesn't require much conceptual understanding nor many lines of code to bang something together. There are still graphical programming environments out there and there is even a general one in the form of LabVIEW community edition. However, they just don't have the network effect of…

But HyperCard wasn't really for making GUI programs - i do not even think many people who used it viewed themselves as programmers (at least not any more than people who make complex stuff on Excel do). Sure, you can place buttons and input fields, but it was more of a hyperlinked painting program that also allowed you to enter interactive elements. I think it was closer to something like Powerpoint (which i think al…

As someone who made a great many HyperCard stacks, I like this characterization:

> I think it was closer to something like Powerpoint (which i think also allows you to put interactive elements and jump between slides) and Access

Hypercard occupied this weird in-between space. It was kind of a programming thing, but not exactly. You could certainly program it. And it could load XCMDs and XFCNs to expand the universe of things you could do with it. But it was a lot like PowerPoint too. I wasted a ton of time playing with transitions (dissolve, fade, swipe up, swipe across, etc) between cards.

I think HyperCard was the last thing of its kind. By that I mean its a throwback to when the default assumption was that anyone who bought a computer was, as a matter of course, going to program it. The same way many machines in the 1980s booted into BASIC interpreters and pretty much all of them included one in the default environment. HyperCard was the last effort that I can think of to take that idea and make it accessible to people who didn't know what "programming" was.

The last macs that shipped with it were, IMO, the last computers that came, by default, with everything their users needed to create and distribute programs for them and the assumption that most of their users would do just that.

I'm not sure that idea can be replicated anymore. I'm sure it can't, at scale.

Re: LiveCode is a modern day HyperCard (2019)

#48

Post by phaedryx »

badsectoracula wrote: post #26

Looks like you need to supply them your name and email even for just the open source version. Why do people do this? Just provide the installer :-/

I also found that off-putting. I almost set up a mailinator email, but when the friction gets that high I usually bail instead.

Re: LiveCode is a modern day HyperCard (2019)

#49

Post by poulsbohemian »

hoistbypetard wrote: post #47
badsectoracula wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But HyperCard wasn't really for making GUI programs - i do not even think many people who used it viewed themselves as programmers (at least not any more than people who make complex stuff on Excel do). Sure, you can place buttons and input fields, but it was more of a hyperlinked painting program that also allowed you to enter interactive elements. I think it was closer to something like Powerpoint (which i think al…

As someone who made a great many HyperCard stacks, I like this characterization: > I think it was closer to something like Powerpoint (which i think also allows you to put interactive elements and jump between slides) and Access Hypercard occupied this weird in-between space. It was kind of a programming thing, but not exactly. You could certainly program it. And it could load XCMDs and XFCNs to expand the universe o…

I like the way you contextualize this. What's interesting is to contemplate that Macs still come with / have free access to Xcode and apps like Developer and Swift Playgrounds, which would seem to fit into what you are saying above in terms of free tools assuming the purchasing user wants to program. But what tools like that say about the complexity of modern programming vs. the wonderful simplicity of HyperCard is an interesting philosophical exercise.

Re: LiveCode is a modern day HyperCard (2019)

#50

Post by qznc »

JoblessWonder wrote: post #12

I'll take any opportunity to ask HN what sort of "Hypercard" like options are out there to get kids into programming. I still have many memories of creating my own "Choose Your Adventure" type game and having the other kids in my class be amazed at what I was able to create. It really stuck with me.

For CYA there are plenty of "interactive fiction" tools. They range in complexity from mere hyperlinking over simple state management to Turing complete programming.

https://infinite-story.com/ https://twinery.org/ http://inform7.com/ https://www.tads.org/

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