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Why Hypercard had to die (2011)

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Re: Why Hypercard had to die (2011)

#51

Post by easton »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #24
twobitshifter wrote: post #8

I liked seeing the examples of creating a calculator in HyperCard, but I don’t think that Steve Jobs killed it because it was some existential threat to Apple’s profits. Apple gives away its software for free when you buy a Mac, and to my knowledge they don’t make a large fraction of money on selling software licenses. It’s also completely possible to run your own code today on a Mac, so we would have to believe that…

I see it as not-invented-here. He was in love with NeXT Step because it was his. The Apple ][ shipped with BASIC. Apple was not founded on letting you consume your computer. But the world had changed since the 1970's and there was a software ecosystem. Hypercard would seem to have brought programming to the masses. But by then there was a broad base of software companies that would provide users the calculator app, e…

> He was in love with NeXTSTEP because it was his.

Famously, when he returned to Apple, he used NeXTSTEP/OpenStep instead of a Mac until Mac OS X 10.1 came out and it was stable enough for production use. I can't find the article, but someone received an email from him around 2000 where the headers said NeXTMail.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12182350

Re: Why Hypercard had to die (2011)

#52

Post by gfxgirl »

twobitshifter wrote: post #8

I liked seeing the examples of creating a calculator in HyperCard, but I don’t think that Steve Jobs killed it because it was some existential threat to Apple’s profits. Apple gives away its software for free when you buy a Mac, and to my knowledge they don’t make a large fraction of money on selling software licenses. It’s also completely possible to run your own code today on a Mac, so we would have to believe that…

> Apple gives away its software for free when you buy a Mac,

Correction: Apple charges a premium for their computers because that premium pays for all the software packages they include with it. XCode, Keynote, Pages, Numbers, etc... None of that is included in Windows but I can buy a fully usable by most people Windows laptop for $299 vs the cheapest Mac laptop is $999. Of course some of that $700 difference is that Mac is a better piece of hardware but much of it is you're paying for all the extra software.

BTW: If I could choose to buy a Mac for $200-$300 less without most of the extra software I would since I don't use any of it.

Re: Why Hypercard had to die (2011)

#53

Post by tombert »

phailhaus wrote: post #46
tombert wrote: post #38

Obviously not exactly the same, but a lot of the magic here is something I felt with Macromedia Flash MX back in the day. I had been (at the time) unsuccessful getting a C++ with OpenGL project working, but when I had my pirated copy of Flash, I was very quickly able to make interactive stuff. I never made anything even close to "commercial-ready", but I had a lot of fun doing it. It felt like within a day or two, yo…

I commented the same sentiment a while back and someone pointed me to Construct [1] as a spiritual successor to Flash! [1] https://www.construct.net/

I actually have a license to Construct as well, and like GameMaker it's fun and I do like it (though I think I actually like GameMaker a bit more).

I haven't used it in like 6 years, so my knowledge is fairly out of date, but if I remember correctly, it's kind of lacking my favorite feature from Flash: the ability to use a professional-grade animation tool directly within the program. No messing with exporting sprite sheets or a series of bitmaps or anything, you can just create a movie clip, double click it, animate it, go back, and click "export to code". It's a true "one-stop-shop" for doing almost everything in your project.

GameMaker actually has a pretty-ok sprite animation system built in, good enough for most retro-style games, but it's still pretty weak compared to Flash for anything more complex.

Re: Why Hypercard had to die (2011)

#54

Post by throwanem »

parasubvert wrote: post #36
throwanem wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could learn enough HyperTalk to do useful things inside a day - I know; I did exactly that, when I was 11 or 12 and had a chance to find out on a Mac at the museum where an uncle of mine then worked. Granted I already had experience with Apple BASIC, so wasn't a complete programming novice, but I'd never worked in a graphical environment before, and yet still managed to turn out a fairly presentable, if short, "c…

Not that risable: my 11 year old has gone through the Python Crash Course book and built a basic Django pizza ordering website with a database in a day. That’s after work his way through much of the book, of course, but... as with any complex domain, the right teacher can make a big difference.

I think that goes to both your point and mine; sure, the website does a little more in that it can be accessed from computers other than the one where it's running, but he also needed a whole book to do not much more than scratch the surface of what we call "web programming".

That's not to say it isn't a significant accomplishment, and he should be proud of it!

Re: Why Hypercard had to die (2011)

#55

Post by tombert »

masoodkamandy wrote: post #37

Pretty disappointed with the use of autistic as an insult. Really unnecessary and offensive. I was a lover of hypercard. It seemed to rekindle some if the magic of AppleSoft BASIC when I moved from the Apple II to the Mac in elementary school. I remember being surprised at how difficult it was to program a Mac compared to an Apple II until I found HyperCard. It seemed full of possibility.

> Pretty disappointed with the use of autistic as an insult. Really unnecessary and offensive.

I'm inclined to agree. The word "annoying" would have worked about equally well without being as mean-spirited.

Re: Why Hypercard had to die (2011)

#56

Post by dsr_ »

My takeaway is this:

"The reason for this is that HyperCard is an echo of a different world. One where the distinction between the "use" and "programming" of a computer has been weakened and awaits near-total erasure. A world where the personal computer is a mind-amplifier, and not merely an expensive video telephone. A world in which Apple's walled garden aesthetic has no place."

This is the antithesis of the UNIX way.

"The essence of the UNIX philosophy is not “make small utilities that can be fitted together with pipes” but to assume that at any moment, a user might decide to be a developer or a sysadmin and should have the tools to do that."

(unashamedly, -- me)

Re: Why Hypercard had to die (2011)

#57

Post by DonHopkins »

ChrisSD wrote: post #10
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #3

On a Podcast, Bill Atkinson theorized the reason Steve Jobs killed Hypercard was because it was the reason Bill had refused to leave Apple to join Steve at NeXT.

This assumes Jobs was a particularly petty person.

You're right, it's a big assumption that he was a person.

Re: Why Hypercard had to die (2011)

#58

Post by analog31 »

parasubvert wrote: post #30
analog31 wrote: post #27

I loved HyperCard. A Mac with Hypercard allowed me to completely bypass the entire Windows 3.1 era. I wrote some insane things in HC. By the time HC was ready to die, Visual Basic was ready to use. Of course it would be offensive to compare VB to HC, given that VB was worse in a lot of ways. Bear with me. ;-) What HC did was provide an extremely limited palette of system features for you to play with. It was extensib…

This is a great point. Also, the environment that feels most like an environment for “not really programmers but sort of if I need to” is the Jupyter Notebook ecosystem which evolved out of IPython. It’s like a spreadsheet for telling a narrative.

These days, Jupyter Notebook is my brain. Other than for the hidden state problem, it's the best thing since sliced bread. In fact, my favorite way of sharing "software" is in this form.

Re: Why Hypercard had to die (2011)

#59

Post by nabla9 »

TetOn wrote: post #28
nabla9 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> World Wide Web accomplished basically the same thing, This is incorrect and I'm convinced that you agree after you think it little more. HyperCard was tool for non-programmers. Like spreadsheet. Web is not alternative to HyperCard. You have to learn web programming to do anything. We should not get over it, but create replacement or recreate it.

> You have to learn web programming to do anything. Sorry, but I don't see how that is at all different than "you have to learn the Hypercard scripting language to do anything."

Hypercard scripting was intended for non-programmers. Normal people can do wonders with simple tools after little learning. Just like people using spreadsheets. Hypercard made programming available for non-programmers.

Re: Why Hypercard had to die (2011)

#60

Post by donatj »

Quartz Composer had a very similar sort of level of ease of use. Drag some components out, wire them together, add some AppleScript or JavaScript if you want. And of course Apple has let that whither on the vine for the last ten years.

I still use it on occasion to debug HID devices because it’s so fricken easy. Drag out the HID block, pick my device, drag the value I want to inspect onto a text render block. Done. Updates in real-time, essentially built an HID oscilloscope.

Update - old video of me using it to inspect a keyboard

- https://twitter.com/donatj/status/1223093796558209026

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