4 ms·

It was a different time, the world moved on to web enabled / multi-user applications. Hypercard and MS Access where decidedly built around single users with the

by kls 7y ago

It was a different time, the world moved on to web enabled / multi-user applications. Hypercard and MS Access where decidedly built around single users with the latter having multi-user capabilities but not great support for it. They where both designed in a time where a constant network connection was a luxury and not a commodity. They where awesome for their time, but it was also a simpler time, as of yet no one has come up with a stupid simple app builder for present day computing realities as complexity has exploded, its a interesting problem and if a person could make creating simple apps for web/mobile/multi-user as easy as Hypercard was, they would certainly be rolling in fortunes.

asciilifeform 7y ago
One of the attractions of Hypercard was that a "stack" (document) was entirely self-contained; and would always behave exactly the same on any machine where HC could run. Notably, would run without any need for servers (or, worse, the subscription-and-lock-in "services" ubiquitous today -- arguably the 1980s "computer revolution" was strangled in the cradle, and we've gone most of the way back to 1970s-style time-sharing now: how many phone apps etc. will run usefully without a net connection? The "smartphone" is essentially a small "glass TTY", rather than personal computer in the '80s sense.) I've run HC stacks written 30+ years ago. How many current-day "web app" documents will be readable as-found 30 years from now? For that matter, I've paid for iOS apps that would no longer execute after half a year (on account of Apple's "API changes", or in some cases -- author's "call home" server fell down and did not get up, etc.) Permanence (in the most basic "I paid for this and it ought to be usable for so long as any compatible iron remains functional" sense) is no longer part of the software commercial culture, and one is likely to be laughed at for merely raising the question.
- scroot 7y ago
  > The "smartphone" is essentially a small "glass TTY", rather than personal computer in the '80s sense. We now have a generation or two that completely missed this era, and, worse, might be uninterested in the history. The idea that you would have a ubiquitous, portable, always-on personal computing device and that -- at least from the perspective of people who are knowledgeable of about this history -- you would put a Unix on it is completely crazy. It is, as you say, an expensive and sleek teletype emulator

by kls 7y ago

asciilifeform 7y ago

One of the attractions of Hypercard was that a "stack" (document) was entirely self-contained; and would always behave exactly the same on any machine where HC could run. Notably, would run without any need for servers (or, worse, the subscription-and-lock-in "services" ubiquitous today -- arguably the 1980s "computer revolution" was strangled in the cradle, and we've gone most of the way back to 1970s-style time-sharing now: how many phone apps etc. will run usefully without a net connection? The "smartphone" is essentially a small "glass TTY", rather than personal computer in the '80s sense.) I've run HC stacks written 30+ years ago. How many current-day "web app" documents will be readable as-found 30 years from now? For that matter, I've paid for iOS apps that would no longer execute after half a year (on account of Apple's "API changes", or in some cases -- author's "call home" server fell down and did not get up, etc.) Permanence (in the most basic "I paid for this and it ought to be usable for so long as any compatible iron remains functional" sense) is no longer part of the software commercial culture, and one is likely to be laughed at for merely raising the question.

scroot 7y ago
> The "smartphone" is essentially a small "glass TTY", rather than personal computer in the '80s sense. We now have a generation or two that completely missed this era, and, worse, might be uninterested in the history. The idea that you would have a ubiquitous, portable, always-on personal computing device and that -- at least from the perspective of people who are knowledgeable of about this history -- you would put a Unix on it is completely crazy. It is, as you say, an expensive and sleek teletype emulator