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All programming environments do that for programmers. Not all do that for people who aren't software developers. Case in point: Some of the finance people I wo

All programming environments do that for programmers. Not all do that for people who aren't software developers. Case in point: Some of the finance people I work with build incredible spreadsheets. Formulas upon formulas that turn their special spreadsheet into what is really an application. They're programming, but that isn't how they think about it (I've asked). They're just Excel power users. HyperCard aficionados were the same way. They were programming with the assumption that they just knew HyperCard really well. You wouldn't be able to sit Douglas Adams (were he alive) in front of XCode and get the equivalent of his HyperCard stack out: https://archive.org/details/DouglasAdamsMegapode https://archive.org/details/DouglasAdamsMegapode The reason is that it requires a dramatically higher investment to create in XCode. "Just learn Swift" doesn't really cut it as an alternative.

scroot 7y ago
It was even clear from the terminology: anyone who made stacks in Hypercard was called an "Author" -- which comprised both "developers" AND users. That naming couldn't be more to the point about the intention of the system.
trop 7y ago
As an example, a decade ago I taught art students how to code. They had Macintoshes. I had them download Emacs then taught them Emacs Lisp. As insane as that sounds, it was interactive, easy to install, and interesting. They were able to write programs in the REPL after the first class. I wouldn't have dared to have put them in front of XCode or some equivalent IDE.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- mycall 7y ago
  Why didn't you use MaxMSP or Processing?
  - trop 7y ago
    A fair question. An easy answer is that I thought Lisp was pretty cool, and that the students were capable of it. And, pragmatically, I was experienced with it, unlike MaxMSP or Processing. But there was something philosophical: I liked the idea of introducing them to the feel of fundamental computer science, rather than a nice layer over computers for artists. (And what artists actually use those nice layers?) I wanted them to experience an open source ecosystem (unlike Max), and I felt that the Java-base of Procesing was off aesthetically -- too many layers over the machine. Thinking about the OP, I do wonder what it would have been like to teach coding-for-artists with Hypercard. One thing I love about Emacs Lisp is that it is only grudgingly visual. That it returns computers to something which sends output to a TTY. It gives people who have grown up with a GUI a vision of what computers were like before. I like that Emacs (and Lisp) are things with a history and touch on earlier eras of computer culture.
eridius 7y ago
Swift is absolutely targeted as an introductory programming language. The same audience that was scripting in Hypercard could grab Apple's Swift Playgrounds iPad app and start learning Swift using neat interactive tutorials today and graduate to writing full-fledged programs. Not only that, but Xcode Playgrounds on the desktop are also a great interactive environment for playing with code, just without the awesome interactive tutorials that Swift Playgrounds on the iPad has.
- CharlesW 7y ago
  > The same audience that was scripting in Hypercard could grab Apple's Swift Playgrounds iPad app and start learning Swift using neat interactive tutorials today and graduate to writing full-fledged programs. You're correct in that some software developers got their first taste of programming with HyperCard, but you're incorrect in that 99%+ of HyperCard users would have zero interest in developing in Xcode (regardless of language). They are completely different experiences designed for completely different types of users.
  - eridius 7y ago
    I said Swift Playgrounds, not Xcode. But I also disagree. The people who just dragged around icons in Hypercard and never actually did any scripting, they wouldn't do anything with Xcode, but they're also not the people we're talking about. The people who did learn Hypercard scripting absolutely could do the exact same thing by dragging around buttons in Xcode's Interface Builder and hooking them up with a little bit of Swift scripting. That tutorial about making a calculator in Hypercard, you could do very nearly the same thing in Xcode except for the missing "eval" operator, but that's ok because you can just run each operator immediately (like normal calculators do) instead of building up a long string and then eval'ing the whole thing.
    - CharlesW 7y ago
      > I said Swift Playgrounds, not Xcode. You did, but (as you note) Swift Playgrounds don't get you anywhere near the interactive, self-contained experience that users could create and share with HyperCard. > The people who did learn Hypercard scripting absolutely could do the exact same thing by dragging around buttons in Xcode's Interface Builder and hooking them up with a little bit of Swift scripting. What you're saying is analogous to saying, "People who learned Excel and VBA could do the exact same thing by creating a web app in Visual Studio Code and hooking it up with a little bit of JavaScript". Yes, conceptually both are "just" programming. In reality, they're worlds apart.

scroot 7y ago

It was even clear from the terminology: anyone who made stacks in Hypercard was called an "Author" -- which comprised both "developers" AND users. That naming couldn't be more to the point about the intention of the system.

trop 7y ago

As an example, a decade ago I taught art students how to code. They had Macintoshes. I had them download Emacs then taught them Emacs Lisp. As insane as that sounds, it was interactive, easy to install, and interesting. They were able to write programs in the REPL after the first class. I wouldn't have dared to have put them in front of XCode or some equivalent IDE.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
mycall 7y ago
Why didn't you use MaxMSP or Processing?
- trop 7y ago
  A fair question. An easy answer is that I thought Lisp was pretty cool, and that the students were capable of it. And, pragmatically, I was experienced with it, unlike MaxMSP or Processing. But there was something philosophical: I liked the idea of introducing them to the feel of fundamental computer science, rather than a nice layer over computers for artists. (And what artists actually use those nice layers?) I wanted them to experience an open source ecosystem (unlike Max), and I felt that the Java-base of Procesing was off aesthetically -- too many layers over the machine. Thinking about the OP, I do wonder what it would have been like to teach coding-for-artists with Hypercard. One thing I love about Emacs Lisp is that it is only grudgingly visual. That it returns computers to something which sends output to a TTY. It gives people who have grown up with a GUI a vision of what computers were like before. I like that Emacs (and Lisp) are things with a history and touch on earlier eras of computer culture.

eridius 7y ago

Swift is absolutely targeted as an introductory programming language. The same audience that was scripting in Hypercard could grab Apple's Swift Playgrounds iPad app and start learning Swift using neat interactive tutorials today and graduate to writing full-fledged programs. Not only that, but Xcode Playgrounds on the desktop are also a great interactive environment for playing with code, just without the awesome interactive tutorials that Swift Playgrounds on the iPad has.

CharlesW 7y ago
> The same audience that was scripting in Hypercard could grab Apple's Swift Playgrounds iPad app and start learning Swift using neat interactive tutorials today and graduate to writing full-fledged programs. You're correct in that some software developers got their first taste of programming with HyperCard, but you're incorrect in that 99%+ of HyperCard users would have zero interest in developing in Xcode (regardless of language). They are completely different experiences designed for completely different types of users.
- eridius 7y ago
  I said Swift Playgrounds, not Xcode. But I also disagree. The people who just dragged around icons in Hypercard and never actually did any scripting, they wouldn't do anything with Xcode, but they're also not the people we're talking about. The people who did learn Hypercard scripting absolutely could do the exact same thing by dragging around buttons in Xcode's Interface Builder and hooking them up with a little bit of Swift scripting. That tutorial about making a calculator in Hypercard, you could do very nearly the same thing in Xcode except for the missing "eval" operator, but that's ok because you can just run each operator immediately (like normal calculators do) instead of building up a long string and then eval'ing the whole thing.
  - CharlesW 7y ago
    > I said Swift Playgrounds, not Xcode. You did, but (as you note) Swift Playgrounds don't get you anywhere near the interactive, self-contained experience that users could create and share with HyperCard. > The people who did learn Hypercard scripting absolutely could do the exact same thing by dragging around buttons in Xcode's Interface Builder and hooking them up with a little bit of Swift scripting. What you're saying is analogous to saying, "People who learned Excel and VBA could do the exact same thing by creating a web app in Visual Studio Code and hooking it up with a little bit of JavaScript". Yes, conceptually both are "just" programming. In reality, they're worlds apart.