
25 years of HyperCard—the missing link to the Web - evo_9
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/05/25-years-of-hypercard-the-missing-link-to-the-web/
======
zf1234
Apple should make new version of HyperCard for iOS. Take some of the functions
of Automator, add a whole lot more access to OS functions, media and have
people make their own Apps.

Throwing together a program in a fun interface would be nice to get all those
people creating, rather than playing Angry Birds on their way to work.

Let them combine their Garage Band songs, photos, videos, art, and writing
into a nice little package that utilise functions of the device, their
computer, Apple TVs, etc.

I'm not a programmer (and never used HyperCard) but I'm sure I could handle
making something like: When [my Location data] is within [Y radius] call
[vibrate; play song], [show this picture; display text "You've arrived at your
station!"

Or I could prototype a point-n-click adventure with graphics drawn on my iPad.
Or I could tell it to play an alarm every morning at 7am, then take a photo.
Backup photos on X device. On the 365th day make all photos into a movie. Add
text "A year in the life of [ENTER NAME]"

I think Apple needs to remember the reason a lot of people bought Apple
products in the first place was because their simplicity allowed the
technology to get out of the way and let people create. iPhones; social
networks are all one-sided consumption, and people are getting bored. They
love making stuff.

I think if Apple doesn't give people more of this kind of creativity, then
people will flock to whoever does.

...Even cooler would be a combination of Project Glass and that LEAP system. I
could be drawing blueprints, shaping 3D models, or making programs in
augmented reality. It would be cool to look into a room and see dimensions of
all the walls - see virtual previews of furniture in the scene; pull and
arrange table sizes, shelves, bend and alter models. Then you could package it
up to make a catalogue for other people to browse and choose options from.

I'd have a stack of cards, media files, functions, etc. in front of me. Draw
lines between objects, stack, rearrange cards, manually code some parts. Some
kind of combination of making an art collage and a circuit board.

Hmmmmm....

~~~
coolestuk
Hypertalk has gone on from strength to strength. I'm surprised that the Ars
Technica writer should be so uninformed.

Runtime Revolution have been providing a Hypercard environment for at least a
decade, and the technology they acquired had been in use since about 1992 (it
was originally designed for Unix environemnts).

Runrev's Livecode produces hypercard-like applications that run on Windows, OS
X, linux, android, and iOS. It also runs server-side, but I have no use for
that part of the tecnology.

<http://www.runrev.com/>

And no, I don't work for them. I've just been using the technology for the
past 10 years or so.

~~~
raganwald
I used RR a looooong time ago to write a configuration wizard for a Java
development tool set. The product used text files for configuration, and over
the years the files had swollen in incomprehensible ways as programmers stuck
new options into them willy-nilly.

Project management decreed that a wizard would ship with the next release. I
was a full time development manager, but and as all the programmers were busy
building features, I could get away with grabbing this task for myself. I used
RR and built it in a week-end. A week of polishing and catering to PM requests
followed, and we were ready to ship on Windows and several flavours of Unix.

Then somebody blabbed that it was written in HyperCard rather than Java.
Faeces was Flung Furiously at Fans. In the end, it was rewritten for the next
version over the course of a month or two. But it was Java! I engaged in a
little revisionist history: Instead of saying that my work was thrown away, I
took credit for building the successful prototype.

------
SimHacker
Arthur van Hoff (who wrote the first Java compiler in Java, developed AWT and
HotJava, founded Marimba and more recently Flipboard) developed a user
interface tool for the NeWS window system inspired by HyperCard, that was
called GoodNeWS, HyperNeWS and then HyperLook.

<http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/hyperlook/index.html>

It used NeWS PostScript both as its graphics model and its scripting language,
and it extended the HyperCard Object=>Card=>Background=>Stack delegation model
to send messages over the network to the client (what we now call the web
server -- the terms client and server have switched place since then).

Wikipedia describes NeWS: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeWS>

In many ways NeWS had an excellent design for thin-networked clients

\+ moving much of the processing to the display

\+ allowing clients to reduce network traffic by defining new operators

\+ separating graphical user interface semantics from client program
semantics.

\+ the PostScript drawing model, which is far easier to use and more powerful
than other graphical APIs, even compared to ones being used 20 years later.

NeWS was architecturally similar to what is now called AJAX, except that NeWS:

\+ used PostScript code instead of JavaScript for programming.

\+ used PostScript graphics instead of DHTML/CSS for rendering.

\+ used PostScript data instead of XML/JSON for data representation.

I worked with Arthur on developing HyperLook into a commercial product, and
used it to port SimCity to OpenWindows on the Sun workstation.

Here are some brochures, manuals and articles about
GoodNeWS/HyperNeWS/HyperLook, and the HyperLook SimCity manual:

<http://www.scribd.com/collections/3512581/HyperLook-Manual>

Micropolis is the open source descendent of the original SimCity code that I
ported to Unix.

<http://www.micropolisonline.com>

------
nl
I loved Hypercard.

In 1992 I was in my final year of secondary school and got into a science
extension program which paired students with industry.

Somehow or other I ended up with a guy from DSTO (Australia's publicly funded
defence arm), and he thought it would be a good idea for me to test the
results of underwater acoustic transmissions against some results they had (he
didn't tell me why this was needed, but it was pretty obvious..)

Anyway, he was a Fortran programmer who used a VAX. My family had a Mac Plus
with Hypercard. He gave me "Numerical Recipes in Fortran"[1] and I ended up
implementing Newton's method[1] in Hypercard. After that I felt I really
understood calculus...

[1] <http://www.haoli.org/nr/bookf.html>

[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newtons_method>

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soapdog
There is a language called LiveCode (<http://www.runrev.com> ) that is the
spiritual successor to HyperCard. It uses a modern day xTalk language, it has
network and database access and it cross compiles to Mac OS X, Windows, Linux,
iOS and Android. Oh and it has a special engine that works like PHP, you can
build websites by mixing HTML and xTalk.

I've been using it as my main development toolkit since 2005 and been quite
happy. I am scheduled to speak at their world wide conference this month, so
if you have any question, just ask. If you liked HyperCard and want to see
what it could have been, just check LiveCode

=)

~~~
crag
I used Revolution years ago. Glad to see it's still going strong. :)

------
jakejake
I remember creating a hypercard project in college to demonstrate video
lighting techniques, allowing you turn on/off the various lights in a setup.
Everyone including myself was blown away by that at the time & I think back
once in a while how similar it was in a lot of ways to web development.

------
rwhitman
I'm thoroughly convinced that without hypercard my career path would have been
very different.

~~~
disbelief
Same here! My school was fortunate enough to receive a shipment of Apple
computers when I was in 7th grade. I quickly discovered HyperCard, and spent
my free time the rest of that year building a "fantasy RPG" with it. Totally
ugly, barely worked, only made it about 5 screens deep, but I learned to write
"code" without really realizing it, and I fell in love with building.

Who knows when (if) I would have gotten into programming without HyperCard.

------
michaelpinto
As a non-coder HyperCard opened the door to interactive media for me and I've
never left. I loved that program to death and was still using it to do what we
would now call wireframes as late as the mid-90s. What pains me is that I can
run the latest version of Windows via VMware on my Mac but can't launch good
olde HyperCard and see my old stacks.

~~~
tambourine_man
There are ways to run System 7 and HyperCard today

<http://basilisk.cebix.net/>

<http://minivmac.sourceforge.net/>

<http://sheepshaver.cebix.net/>

~~~
abecedarius
The harder part is finding a copy of full HyperCard (not just the later
viewer) in a format understood by an emulator that runs on modern Mac or
Linux. At least, I couldn't the last couple times I tried.

~~~
michaelpinto
I looked into a few of the Classic mac emulation packages and the amount of
work always looked off putting -- in fact I think some even required finding a
ROM if I recall. It's actually easier for me to dust off my giant G5. And yes
abecedarius another challenge you may find is that if you have the real
Hypercard it would be a series of floppy discs which can no longer be read.

Side note: My other dream has been to run NeXTstep on my Mac -- I understand
that can be done too, but it looks like a ton of work.

------
arethuza
What about this project I've been working on:

\- HyperCard influenced design (Stacks/Cards)

\- Focused on mobile use, HTML5 with offline use

\- RESTful server component with git as the backend storage

\- Seperate web app for stack access & design

\- JavaScript as scripting language

\- Local Storage/offline cache for data storage

Been toying with it as a personal project - I have prototype working...

~~~
CubicleNinjas
Sounds awesome. Any samples online?

~~~
arethuza
I keep re-writing it... :-)

Taking the week off next week to work on this again - going to _start_ with a
demo Stack online.

~~~
CubicleNinjas
Well, good luck next week! :D

My team has been debating about building something similar for years. I just
want it to exist!

------
tudorw
I think one of the things that stands out is that if the patent laden
litigious environment that exists within technology and software today was in
effect in 1990 we would probably be still waiting for the internet...

------
diminish
I used Hypercard and programmed some, as a teenage. It is a stellar example of
how a tech inventor can think of openness vs closeness; www at CERN by Berner
vs Hypercard by some typical Apple guy.

~~~
culturestate
> "some typical Apple guy."

I'm not sure Bill Atkinson qualifies as just "some typical Apple guy." That
aside, in 1987 there really wasn't a concept of "open vs. closed," at least
not in its modern interpretation.

~~~
gaius
Indeed. In the 80s and early 90s there was a huge "public domain" scene, but
no-one thought about source code.

~~~
arethuza
I used BSD Unix on a VAX in the mid 80s - pretty sure that came will full
source.

~~~
gaius
Right, but I am talking programs written by hobbyists on Mac, Amiga, ST, and
so on.

------
jboggan
I remember playing Sabacc freeware on a HyperCard stack with my old LCII.
Unfortunately I eventually figured out the pseudo-random card shuffling
algorithm and it lost all appeal to me.

edit: Found it. <http://hem.passagen.se/johan99/files.htm>

------
redwood
I learned hyper card in 6th grade middle school computer class, 1996. It
really was great... I created games.

------
mikecane
Two things:

1) I miss HyperCard!

2) This seems to have been influenced by HyperCard: <http://www.citia.com>
(Disclosure: I am not connected to them at all).

------
reedhedges
HyperCard 2012 could be positioned as a better (and more powerful/useful)
Powerpoint. Put it on the web and make it multiuser.

------
planetguy
One big lesson from HyperCard is the need to keep releasing updates.

HyperCard never got around to supporting _color_. At least, not properly; I
think there were extensions to do it. HyperCard was released in 1987, the same
year as the first color mac, but was only monochrome. The "Color Tools" came
out in 1992(!) but still made life difficult by not treating color pictures
the same way as monochrome pictures. Given that the whole idea of HyperCard
was to have pretty graphics you can interact with, the lack of color was
pretty crippling by the time most macs had color screens.

It was finally discontinued in 2004, and they'd _never_ got around to
implementing proper support for color graphics.

