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Bill Atkinson has died
251–260 of 295 posts
Re: Bill Atkinson has died
#252In an alternate timeline, HyperCard was not allowed to wither and die, but instead continued to mature, embraced the web, and inspired an entire genre of software-creating software. In this timeline, people shape their computing experiences as easily as one might sculpt a piece of clay, creating personal apps that make perfect sense to them and fit like a glove; computing devices actually become (for everyone, not ju…
We kind of had that for a time with FileMaker and MS Access. People could build pretty amazing stuff with those apps, even without being a programmer. I think the reason those apps never became mainstream is that they didn't have a good solution for sharing data. There were some ways you could use them to access database servers, but setting them up was so difficult that they were for all intents and purposes limited…
Yes! I used FileMaker a lot, and built my first journaling system with it. Like a cross between hypercard and a wiki. It really changed my life and this lead to programming.
Re: Bill Atkinson has died
#253In an alternate timeline, HyperCard was not allowed to wither and die, but instead continued to mature, embraced the web, and inspired an entire genre of software-creating software. In this timeline, people shape their computing experiences as easily as one might sculpt a piece of clay, creating personal apps that make perfect sense to them and fit like a glove; computing devices actually become (for everyone, not ju…
We kind of had that for a time with FileMaker and MS Access. People could build pretty amazing stuff with those apps, even without being a programmer. I think the reason those apps never became mainstream is that they didn't have a good solution for sharing data. There were some ways you could use them to access database servers, but setting them up was so difficult that they were for all intents and purposes limited…
Yes. They didn't survive the transition from workgroup (shared files on a LAN) to client/server.
Re: Bill Atkinson has died
#254In an alternate timeline, HyperCard was not allowed to wither and die, but instead continued to mature, embraced the web, and inspired an entire genre of software-creating software. In this timeline, people shape their computing experiences as easily as one might sculpt a piece of clay, creating personal apps that make perfect sense to them and fit like a glove; computing devices actually become (for everyone, not ju…
It’s ironic that the next graphical programming environment similar to Hypercard was probably Flash - and it obviously died too. What actually are the best successors now, at least for authoring generic apps for the open web? (Other than vibe coding things)
- Minecraft
- Roblox
- LittleBigPlanet
- Mario Maker
This is what kids do to be creative.
Slightly more serious (and therefore less succesful): - Logo/Turtle Graphics - Scratch - HyperStudio
HyperCard was both graphic design and hypertext (links). These two modalities got separated, and I think there are practical reasons for that. Because html/css design actually sucks and never became an amateur art form.
For writing and publishing we got Wiki, Obsidian et al, Blogs (RIP), forums, social media. Not meant to be interactive or programmable, but these fulfill people's needs for publishing.
Re: Bill Atkinson has died
#255Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not doubting that, but what is the substantive difference here? Does the fact that there is a screen buffer on the Mac facilitate clipping that is otherwise not possible on the Alto?
It allows the Mac to use far less RAM to display overlapping windows, and doesn't require any extra hardware. Individual regions are refreshed independently of the rest of the screen, with occlusion, updates, and clipping managed automatically,
So when the OS needs to refresh a portion of the screen (e.g. everything behind a top window that was closed), what happens?
My guess is it asks each application that overlapped those areas to redraw only those areas (in case the app is able to be smart about redrawing incrementally), and also clips the following redraw so that any draw operations issued by the app can be "culled". If an app isn't smart and just redraws everything, the clipping can still eliminate a lot of the draw calls.
Re: Bill Atkinson has died
#256When I was on the ColorSync team at Apple we, the engineers, got an invite to his place-in-the-woods one day. I knew who he was at the time, but for some reason I felt I was more or less beholden to conversing only about color-related issues and how they applied to a computer workflow. Having retired, I have been kicking myself for some time not just chatting with him about ... whatever. He was at the time I met him…
Bill showed up at one of the WWDCs (2011?). I sat next to him during a lunch, not knowing who he was! He told me his name, and then showed me some photos he had taken. He seemed to me to be a gentle and kind soul. So sad to read this news.
Re: Bill Atkinson has died
#257Earlier quoted context omitted.
IIRC, the mouse pointer turning into a hand when you mouse over something clickable was original to HyperCard. And I think Brendan Eich was under a heavy influence of HyperTalk when created JavaScript.
Wasn't the pointer always a hand in HyperCard?
Depended on context, and what the stack programmer set it to. Possibilities (per Fig. 51-1 in _The Complete Hypercard Handbook, 2nd edition_ were:
- watch
- busy
- hand
- arrow
- iBeam
- cross
- plus
Re: Bill Atkinson has died
#258Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Web was significantly influenced by HyperCard. Tim Berners-Lee's original prototypes envisioned it as bidirectional, with a hypertext editor shipping alongside the browser. In that sense it does live on, and serves as the basis for much of the modern Internet.
I honestly don't think the modern web is a legitimate hypertext system at this point. It was already bad enough 20 years ago with flash and serverside CGI but now most of the major websites are just serving JavaScript programs that then fetch data using a dedicated API. And then there's all the paywalls and constant CAPTCHA checks to make sure you aren't training an LLM off their content without a license. Look up hy…
This is discussed a bit in the book:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/192405005-hypermedia-sys...
which maybe argues for a return to early ideas of the web as a successor to Hypercard...
Re: Bill Atkinson has died
#259Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s ironic that the next graphical programming environment similar to Hypercard was probably Flash - and it obviously died too. What actually are the best successors now, at least for authoring generic apps for the open web? (Other than vibe coding things)
- Minecraft - Roblox - LittleBigPlanet - Mario Maker This is what kids do to be creative. Slightly more serious (and therefore less succesful): - Logo/Turtle Graphics - Scratch - HyperStudio HyperCard was both graphic design and hypertext (links). These two modalities got separated, and I think there are practical reasons for that. Because html/css design actually sucks and never became an amateur art form. For writi…
Yeah, that sums things up well --- the problem of course is what happens when one works on a project which blurs boundaries.
I had to drop into BlockSCAD to rough out an arc algorithm for my current project:
https://github.com/WillAdams/gcodepreview
(see the subsubsection "Arcs for toolpaths and DXFs")
Jupyter Notebooks come close to allowing a seamless blending of text and algorithm, but they are sorely missing on the graphic design and vector graphics front --- which now that I write that, makes me realize that that is the big thing which I miss when trying to use them. Makes me wish for JuMP, a Jupyter Notebook which incorporates METAPOST --- if it also had an interactive drawing mode, it would be perfect.... (for my needs).
Re: Bill Atkinson has died
#260In an alternate timeline, HyperCard was not allowed to wither and die, but instead continued to mature, embraced the web, and inspired an entire genre of software-creating software. In this timeline, people shape their computing experiences as easily as one might sculpt a piece of clay, creating personal apps that make perfect sense to them and fit like a glove; computing devices actually become (for everyone, not ju…
His legacy still exists and continues today. Even updated to modern sensibilities, cross-platform, and compatible with all your legacy Hypercard stacks!
As far as I remember, progression was Hypercard -> Metacard -> Runtime Revolution -> Livecode.
I was a kid when this progression first happened, my older brother Tuviah Snyder (now at Apple), was responsible for much of these updates and changes first at Metacard and then at its acquirer Runtime Revolution.
I even wrote some of my first programs as Hypercard compatible stacks. Was quite fun to see my apps on download.com, back in the day when that meant something :).
I always joked it required please and thank you due to its verbosity, but was super simple, accessible, and worked!
How nice, that even today one can take their legacy Hypercard Stacks and run them in the web, mobile, etc. Or create something new in what was more structured vibecoding before vibecoding :).