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Why Hypercard had to die (2011)

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Re: Why Hypercard had to die (2011)

#71

Post by parasubvert »

throwanem wrote: post #54
parasubvert wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

I don’t know that it is only scratching the surface - the book gets you into an interactive site that is styled with Bootstrap, uses a database, uses web APIs, pushes to Heroku so it’s HA and scalable, etc.

It’s pretty much all the major elements of web programming but using the more elegant ways of simplifying the experience.

I’m not denying the complexity just saying that there are still many (particularly in Python or in cloud PaaSes) who value streamlining the experience.

Re: Why Hypercard had to die (2011)

#72

Post by tombert »

jchw wrote: post #62
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…

What about Adobe Animate? Granted, I haven’t actually tried, but my understanding is that it is like Flash but targeting the modern web.

I haven't tried it, though if I recall they've greatly started de-emphasizing the coding aspect of it.

Even still, I don't believe I can export directly to anything supported nowadays, right? Does the HTML5 exporter work?

Re: Why Hypercard had to die (2011)

#73

Post by solarkraft »

jchw wrote: post #62
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…

What about Adobe Animate? Granted, I haven’t actually tried, but my understanding is that it is like Flash but targeting the modern web.

I tried it out when it was called Edge and found it really easy to make interactive stuff using it! Since I've never made anything using Flash I don't know and would be quite interested in what it's lacking in comparison.

Re: Why Hypercard had to die (2011)

#74

Post by parasubvert »

throwanem wrote: post #50
parasubvert wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Web was a gateway tech for a whole generation of “non programmers”, and for at least its first 10-15 years (through 2005 or so) you could build reasonable sites without being a programmer. But as with all simple things in tech, there are more people whose pay depends on complexity. And so Web 2.0 rose and CSS+JavaScript became what it is today.

You still can build reasonable sites in the circa-2005 style - I'm actually helping one of my mentees work through doing just that, as a way to learn the basic concepts of web dev without having to fight through all the added abstraction that more modern tools involve. (If anything, it's easier today to build a circa-2005 style site than it was in 2005! The native API has grown up enough that you don't need jQuery an…

I agree, though I think the same can be said for HyperCard. Extending it was complicated.

Re: Why Hypercard had to die (2011)

#75

Post by perardi »

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 think you've about got it.

I don't think this was Apple's attempt to stifle the ability to code on your own computer. They shipped Project Builder on, what, day 1 of Mac OS X?

It's more likely that…

…this was not super popular, as what's the possible market for an app that builds applets that only work on Macs? Given Mac marketshare at the time, maybe not a lot of hobbyists who (a) wanted to make an app, but (b) didn't want to dive into building a full UIKit application.

…this thing was confusing to market. It's hard to give the 1-liner description of HyperCard.

…this got dropped because it was not part of the core focus of getting a next-generation operating system out the door.

…maybe they didn't actually know how to rewrite it for OS X? Like, did anyone know how the HyperTalk interpreter worked besides the guy who make it?

Re: Why Hypercard had to die (2011)

#76

Post by thrower123 »

stupidcar wrote: post #33
thrower123 wrote: post #19

There is a disturbing tendency to try to sideline imperfect, but productive and accessible programming environments in favor of both more complicated, heavyweight "real" programmer languages, or on the other extreme, extremely limited no-code/low-code solutions that are frustrating and impossible to do anything beyond toy workflows. This ground that HyperCard or Visual Basic 6 or Flash occupied has been ruthlessly ra…

Those accessible programming environments tended to exhibit exponentially worsening performance and maintainability characteristics as the complexity of the system being built with them grew. This would be have been fine, so long as these systems remained relatively simple, and were rebuilt in more heavyweight but scalable languages once they reached a certain level of complexity. But that isn't what happened. Instea…

Is this really the case, or does stuff just continue flowing into the tools that are still accessible to users?

I have seen an incredible number of businesses that run off of either Excel spreadsheets, or glomped together masses of Salesforce customizations. I'm not convinced that this is an improvement in matters.

I also think that there's just a lot of custom software that doesn't get built.

Re: Why Hypercard had to die (2011)

#77

Post by phailhaus »

tombert wrote: post #53
phailhaus wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sprit…

Looks like Construct has an Animations Editor too :) I get where you're coming from though, Flash was directly responsible for that golden age of creativity, because it was so accessible that literally children were making cool things with it.

https://www.construct.net/en/make-games/manuals/construct-3/...

Re: Why Hypercard had to die (2011)

#78

Post by anthonygd »

stupidcar wrote: post #33
thrower123 wrote: post #19

There is a disturbing tendency to try to sideline imperfect, but productive and accessible programming environments in favor of both more complicated, heavyweight "real" programmer languages, or on the other extreme, extremely limited no-code/low-code solutions that are frustrating and impossible to do anything beyond toy workflows. This ground that HyperCard or Visual Basic 6 or Flash occupied has been ruthlessly ra…

Those accessible programming environments tended to exhibit exponentially worsening performance and maintainability characteristics as the complexity of the system being built with them grew. This would be have been fine, so long as these systems remained relatively simple, and were rebuilt in more heavyweight but scalable languages once they reached a certain level of complexity. But that isn't what happened. Instea…

> As a result, the industry shifted to encouraging the use of "real" programming languages for everything, even the simplest systems, because the greater up-front costs were saved many times over by having a sane story for long-term maintenance and improvement.

That makes a certain amount of sense; I know I've sworn at insane Excel spreadsheets that have lived far longer than they should have.

The thing I'd argue is that the vast majority of business tools are only useful for very few people for a very short period of time. Sometimes they are never useful. Doing those in a "real" language can have an ROI of centuries (or never), so just never get automated or tried. There's a very important place for cheap prototyping and if non-developers can do it that's even better.

Re: Why Hypercard had to die (2011)

#79

Post by coldtea »

The conclusion feels bogus and forced:

>The various HyperCard clones and HyperCard-influenced software lack HyperCard's radical simplicity and the resulting explorability. Explorability of the "master of all you survey" variety matters. All of the extra features in a more feature-rich system like SuperCard (or even VB) are not harmless. There is a fundamental difference, especially for a child, between a system which you can fully wrap your mind around and one with countless mystery knobs.

Says who?

>4. Everybody pushing Javascript, Python, Wx/Qt, Cocoa, and other abominations as "HyperCard replacements" simply does not remember being a child. And/or lacks a creative bone in his body. And/or is a malicious idiot.

Or the author might remember being a kid himself, but he doesn't know what is to be a kid in 2021. There are kids todays (even 8-12 year olds) who do more with Javascript, Python, Swift Playgrounds etc, than the best things ever done with HyperCard.

And the reason they don't use something like one of HyperCards successors, is not that it's 'too complicated', but that it doesn't really solve problems they have in 2021.

>But what he really sold us was a (fairly comfortable) train for the mind. A train which goes only where rails have been laid down

And yet Apple under Jobs and later, continued to ship AppleScript, shipped Swift Playground, and other such tools. And their subsidiary makes a powerful "build your own app" tool (FileMaker).

It's BS to present it as if HyperCard-made basically toy apps would be some kind of threat (or even just perceived as such) to Apple's bottom line or core products.

HyperCard alongside with other stuff was killed to re-focus Apple and save it. Apple was dying in near bankruptcy with HyperCard and Newton and everything - not only they weren't some big success, but not even the core offerings were much of success at the time either.

>Seems like many readers continue to miss the essential point, just as they did in 2011.

Or the point was bogus and the author insists on flogging a dead horse (or blowing a rusty trumpet)...

Re: Why Hypercard had to die (2011)

#80

Post by twobitshifter »

gfxgirl wrote: post #52
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…

Thank you, free was not the right choice of words. My point was that Apple does not make its money selling individual pieces of software which would be endangered by HyperCard. Apple should be indifferent whether someone prefers using the OSX calculator or a version written in HyperCard. They’ve already paid for the machine and the software before they can start using HyperCard.
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