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At the bottom of the comments, a member of the Hypercard team said it was killed in 92, before Jobs returned. There still is no free development tool out there

At the bottom of the comments, a member of the Hypercard team said it was killed in 92, before Jobs returned. There still is no free development tool out there that matches what Hypercard did in terms of power and ease of use. We're still coding with languages designed for constraints that disappeared decades ago.

sansnomme 7y ago
Visual Basic. (The non-.NET versions)
- mysterydip 7y ago
  I still use it sometimes (and still supported in win10 believe it or not)!
  - minxomat 7y ago
    And works really well on wine. The community is still quite active: http://planet-source-code.com/vb/default.asp?lngWId=1 http://planet-source-code.com/vb/default.asp?lngWId=1
- ksec 7y ago
  And Delphi. Somehow all the RAD Programming Languages all died around the same time frame.
stonogo 7y ago
There are options. Scratch comes to mind. Stacksmith is well on its way.
SilasX 7y ago
But what's to say it wouldn't have taken the course of HTML/CSS/JS if it ever got similarly popular?
- scroot 7y ago
  I doubt it. When you made Hypercard stacks you did it in Hypercard. When you make websites, you make them in ... not a web browser.
  - jayd16 7y ago
    Maybe I'm taking this too literally, but you can code Java in eclipse and web pages in several electron apps. What are you implying?
    - TheDong 7y ago
      The parent is talking about an integrated environment for development, where that integrated environment is indistinguishable from the language itself. Examples of this include elisp and emacs, smalltalk and squeak, and to a lesser extent visual studio and C#. There have been relatively few ecosystems so integrated. Java and Javascript/html/electron apps are notably not like that at all. There is no one "the" environment for coding those, simply several very popular ones.
      - scroot 7y ago
        Yes exactly. My own take is that Apple should have made a "Hypercard"-like thing the "top layer" of a new operating system. In other words, the entire desktop/windows/buttons interface to the main OS would be itself scripted in Hypercard. Smalltalk takes this a step further of course by making the whole operating system a live environment. The very UI vocabulary one uses can also double as "programming"
        scarface74 7y ago
        That was the idea behind AppleScript to an extent.
      - jayd16 7y ago
        Hmm. Unity scripting sort of works like this if you if ignore the closed source parts. It's kind of nice to edit the editor. At the same time, having the power to corrupt your runtime is arguably more trouble than it's worth.
traverseda 7y ago
Then it sounds like there's money to be made then. I've never used hypercard, but perhaps it could fill a similar niche as wix?
jayd16 7y ago
I've never used Hypercard and I just can't fathom the love for it. If nothing matches Hypercard, why don't people use it (or some opensource copy) of it? So many seem enthralled by it but the reality is no one seems to want to bring it back.
- tyingq 7y ago
  They do, it's just fragmented. Things like Excel/VB, Quickbase, Airtable, Tableux, etc.
- hjk05 7y ago
  Because newer copies don’t include the nostalgia that’s one of the primary drivers for people’s admiration.
- danaris 7y ago
  Well, the main reason no one uses Hypercard itself is because emulating classic MacOS is a pain and a half. I haven't explored all the copies, but the ones I have seen tend to be less featureful and/or less user-friendly than the original. Furthermore, probably the best modern software that's similar to Hypercard in its overall flexibility and power is...the web. Back in the day, Hypercard was it; there wasn't really anything else in that space. Nowadays, there's still nothing that's quite as awesome or matches all its features, but there are things that are much closer and do a lot of the same things that are much more accessible than emulating or reimplementing Hypercard.
  - cortesoft 7y ago
    Emulating Mac OS classic isn't particularly difficult these days. I use sheepshaver with great success. I actually DO use it to run my old hypercard games I wrote in elementary school.
    - danaris 7y ago
      Last time I tried using Basilisk II, I managed to get it to be stable (running System 7 in an emulated...IIsi, I think?), but if I ever tried to change anything beyond adding and removing disks, it just wouldn't run. I haven't tried SheepShaver much, I admit, because most of the stuff I want to run was written for 68k and runs poorly or not at all on PPC.
EGreg 7y ago
I would argue that Visual Basic on Windows was similar to HyperCard for Mac! It also led to a great number of “regular folks” making “forms” and adding code. And VBX allowed people in Excel to do stuff. Also don’t forget AppleScript. And now on iOS we have Shortcuts and Workflow too.
- mattl 7y ago
  VBX or VBA?
- Torwald 7y ago
  The real HyperCard on Windows was Asymetrix ToolBook, which was very good.
justinator 7y ago
HTML/Javascript get pretty close. Apples to Studebakers comparison, not withstanding.
soapdog 7y ago
you might want to check https://www.livecode.com https://www.livecode.com is is a modern day xtalk, it uses a language and model just like HyperCard but it creates standalones for windows, mac, linux, android and iOS. PS: Disclaimer, I work for them.
- zem 7y ago
  i poked around the website and forum a bit and one thing I missed was a way to see community libraries and projects. check out the euphoria site for instance: http://rapideuphoria.com/archive.htm http://rapideuphoria.com/archive.htm
  - soapdog 7y ago
    I totally agree with you that the site needs more work to make these things more discoverable. We don't have a package manager (I built one more than ten years ago, it never got traction and it was very naive) but there are many libraries floating around. Our forums and mailing lists are the most common places to find resources. The IDE also has an online portal inside it that can be used to share code, most people use it to share demos, samples and libraries.
    - zem 7y ago
      yeah, that's why i feel like euphoria is a good example - they have a small (but, from what i can see, enthusiastic) community, and their website doesn't have a ton of polish, but it's pretty pleasant to navigate and makes things very discoverable.
rrggrr 7y ago
Watch Notion. It's not there yet, but as the API develops it could easily be the next Hypercard.
- ksec 7y ago
  Notion as in [1] ? I thought Coda [2] would be closer ? [1] https://www.notion.so https://www.notion.so [2] https://coda.io/welcome https://coda.io/welcome
CharlesW 7y ago
> At the bottom of the comments, a member of the Hypercard team said it was killed in 92, before Jobs returned. Well, HyperCard had several lives. An early version of HyperCard 3.0 was demonstrated at WWDC in 1996 which used QuickTime ("QuickTime Interactive", or QTi) as its runtime. That would've allowed stacks to run in browsers, and in every app that leveraged QuickTime to render multimedia content. The 1992 killing was before my time, but in any case HyperCard was effectively killed forever in 2000 when Jobs reassigned the HyperCard engineering team to not-HyperCard.

sansnomme 7y ago

Visual Basic. (The non-.NET versions)

mysterydip 7y ago
I still use it sometimes (and still supported in win10 believe it or not)!
- minxomat 7y ago
  And works really well on wine. The community is still quite active: http://planet-source-code.com/vb/default.asp?lngWId=1 http://planet-source-code.com/vb/default.asp?lngWId=1
ksec 7y ago
And Delphi. Somehow all the RAD Programming Languages all died around the same time frame.

stonogo 7y ago

There are options. Scratch comes to mind. Stacksmith is well on its way.

SilasX 7y ago

But what's to say it wouldn't have taken the course of HTML/CSS/JS if it ever got similarly popular?

scroot 7y ago
I doubt it. When you made Hypercard stacks you did it in Hypercard. When you make websites, you make them in ... not a web browser.
- jayd16 7y ago
  Maybe I'm taking this too literally, but you can code Java in eclipse and web pages in several electron apps. What are you implying?
  - TheDong 7y ago
    The parent is talking about an integrated environment for development, where that integrated environment is indistinguishable from the language itself. Examples of this include elisp and emacs, smalltalk and squeak, and to a lesser extent visual studio and C#. There have been relatively few ecosystems so integrated. Java and Javascript/html/electron apps are notably not like that at all. There is no one "the" environment for coding those, simply several very popular ones.
    - scroot 7y ago
      Yes exactly. My own take is that Apple should have made a "Hypercard"-like thing the "top layer" of a new operating system. In other words, the entire desktop/windows/buttons interface to the main OS would be itself scripted in Hypercard. Smalltalk takes this a step further of course by making the whole operating system a live environment. The very UI vocabulary one uses can also double as "programming"
      - scarface74 7y ago
        That was the idea behind AppleScript to an extent.
    - jayd16 7y ago
      Hmm. Unity scripting sort of works like this if you if ignore the closed source parts. It's kind of nice to edit the editor. At the same time, having the power to corrupt your runtime is arguably more trouble than it's worth.

traverseda 7y ago

Then it sounds like there's money to be made then. I've never used hypercard, but perhaps it could fill a similar niche as wix?

jayd16 7y ago

I've never used Hypercard and I just can't fathom the love for it. If nothing matches Hypercard, why don't people use it (or some opensource copy) of it? So many seem enthralled by it but the reality is no one seems to want to bring it back.

tyingq 7y ago
They do, it's just fragmented. Things like Excel/VB, Quickbase, Airtable, Tableux, etc.
hjk05 7y ago
Because newer copies don’t include the nostalgia that’s one of the primary drivers for people’s admiration.
danaris 7y ago
Well, the main reason no one uses Hypercard itself is because emulating classic MacOS is a pain and a half. I haven't explored all the copies, but the ones I have seen tend to be less featureful and/or less user-friendly than the original. Furthermore, probably the best modern software that's similar to Hypercard in its overall flexibility and power is...the web. Back in the day, Hypercard was it; there wasn't really anything else in that space. Nowadays, there's still nothing that's quite as awesome or matches all its features, but there are things that are much closer and do a lot of the same things that are much more accessible than emulating or reimplementing Hypercard.
- cortesoft 7y ago
  Emulating Mac OS classic isn't particularly difficult these days. I use sheepshaver with great success. I actually DO use it to run my old hypercard games I wrote in elementary school.
  - danaris 7y ago
    Last time I tried using Basilisk II, I managed to get it to be stable (running System 7 in an emulated...IIsi, I think?), but if I ever tried to change anything beyond adding and removing disks, it just wouldn't run. I haven't tried SheepShaver much, I admit, because most of the stuff I want to run was written for 68k and runs poorly or not at all on PPC.

EGreg 7y ago

I would argue that Visual Basic on Windows was similar to HyperCard for Mac! It also led to a great number of “regular folks” making “forms” and adding code. And VBX allowed people in Excel to do stuff. Also don’t forget AppleScript. And now on iOS we have Shortcuts and Workflow too.

mattl 7y ago
VBX or VBA?
Torwald 7y ago
The real HyperCard on Windows was Asymetrix ToolBook, which was very good.

justinator 7y ago

HTML/Javascript get pretty close. Apples to Studebakers comparison, not withstanding.

soapdog 7y ago

you might want to check https://www.livecode.com https://www.livecode.com is is a modern day xtalk, it uses a language and model just like HyperCard but it creates standalones for windows, mac, linux, android and iOS. PS: Disclaimer, I work for them.

zem 7y ago
i poked around the website and forum a bit and one thing I missed was a way to see community libraries and projects. check out the euphoria site for instance: http://rapideuphoria.com/archive.htm http://rapideuphoria.com/archive.htm
- soapdog 7y ago
  I totally agree with you that the site needs more work to make these things more discoverable. We don't have a package manager (I built one more than ten years ago, it never got traction and it was very naive) but there are many libraries floating around. Our forums and mailing lists are the most common places to find resources. The IDE also has an online portal inside it that can be used to share code, most people use it to share demos, samples and libraries.
  - zem 7y ago
    yeah, that's why i feel like euphoria is a good example - they have a small (but, from what i can see, enthusiastic) community, and their website doesn't have a ton of polish, but it's pretty pleasant to navigate and makes things very discoverable.

rrggrr 7y ago

Watch Notion. It's not there yet, but as the API develops it could easily be the next Hypercard.

ksec 7y ago
Notion as in [1] ? I thought Coda [2] would be closer ? [1] https://www.notion.so https://www.notion.so [2] https://coda.io/welcome https://coda.io/welcome

CharlesW 7y ago

> At the bottom of the comments, a member of the Hypercard team said it was killed in 92, before Jobs returned. Well, HyperCard had several lives. An early version of HyperCard 3.0 was demonstrated at WWDC in 1996 which used QuickTime ("QuickTime Interactive", or QTi) as its runtime. That would've allowed stacks to run in browsers, and in every app that leveraged QuickTime to render multimedia content. The 1992 killing was before my time, but in any case HyperCard was effectively killed forever in 2000 when Jobs reassigned the HyperCard engineering team to not-HyperCard.