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ViperCard – An open source re-creation and re-imagination of HyperCard

vipercard.net

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Re: ViperCard – An open source re-creation and re-imagination of HyperCard

#131

Post by bartread »

dangoor wrote: post #86
bartread wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the risk of courting controversy, arguably that's what Flash was: ActionScript, for example, being based on HyperTalk. Certainly it included many of the concepts originally found in HyperCard. Of course, that too has been superseded, and ironically - after many years of holding Flash in some degree of contempt - I have to admit to being rather saddened by the fact.

I knew about ActionScript's relationship with ECMAScript, but I hadn't been aware of the HyperTalk connection. Very interesting! The Flash authoring tool was always, imho, pretty nice. The runtime had lots of issues, though.

It's funny: the security aspects never really bothered me back in the day (although they should have done).

No, the reason I looked down on Flash, was because all I ever saw were CPU sucking ads, fairly boring non-interactive presentations/videos, those dreadful websites that were all Flash and took an age to load, and then the crappiest of crapware games with no love or attention to detail put into them. As a result, I just came away with the idea that you couldn't do anything good in Flash.

I was wrong. Incredibly and spectacularly wrong. Ironically so, because I'd been a big fan of AMOS back in the day on the Amiga (though I'd have been better off with Blitz, probably) - another environment designed to make it super-easy to take advantage of the multimedia, animation and gaming capabilities of the host platform.

Don't get me wrong: you can do great stuff with HTML5, JavaScript, CSS, WebGL, and so on, but with Flash you could do all that stuff 15 years ago, and it made it all just so much easier. So with the passing of Flash I can't help but think we've lost something, and it makes me a little sad to think about it.

Re: ViperCard – An open source re-creation and re-imagination of HyperCard

#132

Post by matthewmacleod »

mmjaa wrote: post #95
icebraining wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No computers actually come without the means of making them productive; they all have a JS engine. It's how I learned programming, almost twenty years ago - IE5 on a public computer. That said, I do agree that programming should be made more accessible. Bret Victor and others seem to be exploring new ways of doing that, besides making computing more physical: https://dynamicland.org/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item…

There are many who think that JS is not an acceptable means of developing applications for computers. It may be effective, but not acceptable. (Disclaimer: I'm one of them, so this argument doesn't really appeal to me personally. I'd rather there were tools that don't require me to have a lobotomy to use them..)

Those people are universally wrong

Re: ViperCard – An open source re-creation and re-imagination of HyperCard

#133

Post by caf »

VonGuard wrote: post #106
Angostura wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having used both, Scratch is nothing like Hypercard at all. Hypercard was very simple to start with, but you could produce properly powerful programmes with it if you wanted. A closer analogy would be to the fully featured Logos you could get in the late 80s which looked like simple drawing languages on the surface, but were actually pretty full-featured LISP implementations.

Agreed, totally different things. Hypercard was for sharing hyperlinked information. Scratch is for teaching kindergartners how to program in an object-oriented fashion.

The comment I was replying to was grouping Hypercard and QBASIC together under the umbrella of "..democratising programming... reads like English..." and it was specifically this that I was responding to.

QBASIC isn't for sharing hyperlinked information either!

Re: ViperCard – An open source re-creation and re-imagination of HyperCard

#134

Post by dangoor »

bartread wrote: post #131
dangoor wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I knew about ActionScript's relationship with ECMAScript, but I hadn't been aware of the HyperTalk connection. Very interesting! The Flash authoring tool was always, imho, pretty nice. The runtime had lots of issues, though.

It's funny: the security aspects never really bothered me back in the day (although they should have done). No, the reason I looked down on Flash, was because all I ever saw were CPU sucking ads, fairly boring non-interactive presentations/videos, those dreadful websites that were all Flash and took an age to load, and then the crappiest of crapware games with no love or attention to detail put into them. As a result…

Yeah, I have to agree with you there that the web platform has not _quite_ caught up with the total ease of Flash. I think it's starting to get there within certain domains, though, but it has been a long time in coming.

Re: ViperCard – An open source re-creation and re-imagination of HyperCard

#135

Post by GRobLewis »

As for the problem with languages like HyperTalk and AppleScript being read-only, the solution isn't to change the syntax, it's -- wait for it -- AI! If Google can figure out what you want from a spoken free-form inquiry, then a smart interpreter should be able to figure out what you're trying to say in a line of code, even if you don't get the syntax quite right. And if your code is ambiguous, it can ask you confirm your intentions. Why haven't we seen more of this?

Re: ViperCard – An open source re-creation and re-imagination of HyperCard

#136

Post by jlebrech »

zokier wrote: post #113
jlebrech wrote: post #102

there needs to be ways to jump into code without being bogged down with installing compilers and tools and configuring minifiers and choosing frameworks. just code straight away. something that works for kids but also scales all the way into enterprise.

open about:blank, right click, inspect element, start hammering code into console. You can still get pretty far with plain JS these days without touching the quagmire that is modern webdev world. Sure there are some other issues in picking JS, but it is both readily available and (somewhat) scalable to "serious" projects.

nothing can compare to saving a .bas file on a floppy to learn how to code.

Re: ViperCard – An open source re-creation and re-imagination of HyperCard

#138

Post by mmjaa »

matthewmacleod wrote: post #132
mmjaa wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many who think that JS is not an acceptable means of developing applications for computers. It may be effective, but not acceptable. (Disclaimer: I'm one of them, so this argument doesn't really appeal to me personally. I'd rather there were tools that don't require me to have a lobotomy to use them..)

Those people are universally wrong

Rubbish. Javascript is far from acceptable as a first language to learn and use.

Re: ViperCard – An open source re-creation and re-imagination of HyperCard

#139

Post by jasonkostempski »

icebraining wrote: post #83
mmjaa wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> forgotten realm of democratising programming This phrase reminded me of a thought I once had, that the removal of the compiler as a first-class application in user-centric OS distributions was an imperial gesture to enforce class hierarchies among end-users: you were either a user, incapable of making your computer do new things, or you are a developer, who must be convinced to make computers do new things using ru…

No computers actually come without the means of making them productive; they all have a JS engine. It's how I learned programming, almost twenty years ago - IE5 on a public computer. That said, I do agree that programming should be made more accessible. Bret Victor and others seem to be exploring new ways of doing that, besides making computing more physical: https://dynamicland.org/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item…

If there was a standard IDE for using js, HTML and CSS to build desktop apps and games that shipped with major OSs I bet it would get used a ton. Click icon, start new template project. Any more steps required to get started and it will be ignored.

Re: ViperCard – An open source re-creation and re-imagination of HyperCard

#140

Post by matthewmacleod »

mmjaa wrote: post #138
matthewmacleod wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those people are universally wrong

Rubbish. Javascript is far from acceptable as a first language to learn and use.

Nah. Any language is acceptable as a first language. I started writing BASIC. Gatekeeping is for losers.
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