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> But to me the question this raises is - do you think anyone has done better, and if so who?. Yes. Apple in the past, for one. When they included Hypercard fr

by scroot 5y ago

> But to me the question this raises is - do you think anyone has done better, and if so who?. Yes. Apple in the past, for one. When they included Hypercard free with every Macintosh and also began integrating Applescript into the core of their OS, they were taking steps in the right direction. Also, as you mentioned, Smalltalk and similar systems also had a good trajectory in this regard. The incentives and visions of computing have changed drastically since the 80s.

zepto 5y ago
Hmm. I don’t see HyperCard or Applescript as better than anything we have now. They are indicative of a direction, but neither were scalable. Shortcuts seems better than either of them. I see smalltalk as a great vision, but the fact is hasn’t gone further isn’t accidental. It’s certainly not easier to build an app in Squeak, for example, than it is to use XCode and build one using SwiftUI. I am personally of the opinion that nobody has actually done better in reality, even if they have a preferable vision.
- scroot 5y ago
  > I don’t see HyperCard or Applescript as better than anything we have now. The way they worked holistically on their systems at the time and brought users into the fold was certainly better than what we have now. I don't know of anything at present that is equivalent to that relationship -- on OSX or any of the Unicies, for that matter. To be clear I'm not suggesting a Hypercard clone for the modern era, but more of the "spirit" of the thing. Regular users as authors is one part of that. Today all of computing seems geared towards users as consumers. To me the reasons for this are obvious.
  - zepto 5y ago
    I don’t see how there was anything holistic about HyperCard. It wasn’t really much different from Visual Basic except for the Card and Link metaphor, which was good for creating scaffolding without having to start coding first. Database builders like FileMaker or multimedia tools like Macromedia director, and Flash, are in the same family of tool. Even PowerPoint. There was certainly nothing specially integrated about it. It was just a tool. The card metaphor was a good way to build quick interactive presentations, and that was better for a lot of tasks than breaking out a code editor, but that’s all it was. AppleScript is a ridiculously awkward programming language, coupled with a cumbersome way for apps to publish an API, along with some simple coordination primitives. You could imagine a great programming language and a simple mechanism for apps to expose their functionality, but this was not it. > but more of the "spirit" of the thing. Right. My point is that there is nothing these old technologies do that isn’t done way better today. The spirit, I agree, is lost. > Regular users as authors is one part of that. I agree with this too. > Today all of computing seems geared towards users as consumers. Except for the giant stack of programming languages, creative tools, etc, all of which are vastly more end user programmable than anything from the HyperCard or even smalltalk era. Think about blender, Pythonista, gnuradio, Swift playgrounds. Programmability is everywhere. > To me the reasons for this are obvious. That’s where we differ. I think there are enough people who want this thing that if it was that easy we’d have it by now. We can argue that it’s not in Apple’s interest to make this thing (although I think that’s false, and they are trying as hard any one to make programming more accessible). Even if that were true, it doesn’t explain why things are no better on Linux. The spirit of these things is some kind of ubiquitous and powerful and yet progressively accessible programmability and composability of the entire system. That just isn’t something that they actually offered, even though they gestured towards it. It turns out to be a hard problem.
    - scroot 5y ago
      I don't want to drone on about this too much longer since we obviously disagree about some of the big points here (and agree about the "direction," which is more important anyway), but: > I don’t see how there was anything holistic about HyperCard. It wasn’t really much different from Visual Basic except for the Card and Link metaphor, which was good for creating scaffolding without having to start coding first. Database builders like FileMaker or multimedia tools like Macromedia director, and Flash, are in the same family of tool. Even PowerPoint. There was certainly nothing specially integrated about it. It was just a tool. If you look at, say System 7 and the versions of Hypercard that ran on it you'll see that this isn't true. One could control important "outer" functions of the whole operating system from within Hypercard using its own conception of the world, which I would say counts as special integration. The UI even looked quite similar to the rest of the system, making it "real". There was a kind of seamlessness there, and it came before things like PowerPoint etc. Also it was more than just presentations. Non-"programmer" Mac users were building all sorts of things, from zines to point-of-sale systems for their local businesses. At one point in the early 1990s Apple estimated that there were 4 million authors creating their own stacks. I definitely agree that today -- with the current systems we have and the environment that the companies who make them operate -- the problem is extra hard. My recurring thought on the matter is that we need to toss aside things like backward compatibility and software portability (ie, recreate a computing system from the ground up) in order to have what we are talking about. At the end of the day we are still in the world of C and Unix and I don't think we're going to find what we are looking for so long as that remains the case.
      - zepto 5y ago
        > One could control important "outer" functions of the whole operating system from within Hypercard using its own conception of the world, which I would say counts as special integration. Ok - this sounds interesting, but what does it do that can’t be done by VB? > The UI even looked quite similar to the rest of the system, making it "real". This is an important quality, but absolutely one shared by VB and database builders. > There was a kind of seamlessness there, and it came before things like PowerPoint etc. Yes, that it was early and beloved is not in dispute. My point is that it’s not special beyond that, and nothing has been lost. > Also it was more than just presentations. Ok, but that straw-man’s the other tools I mentioned. I mentioned a bunch of things that go far beyond HyperCard in their programmability. > Non-"programmer" Mac users were building all sorts of things, from zines to point-of-sale systems for their local businesses. Zines are augmented presentations. Point of sale systems require programming, and are the canonical example of what database builders are used for today. > At one point in the early 1990s Apple estimated that there were 4 million authors creating their own stacks. Ok, but what point are you making with that. Probably hundreds of millions of people have created a PowerPoint, but how many of them have programmed a behavior using the embedded basic? It’s quite obvious that only a tiny fraction of those 4 million people did anything more than simple presentations. > I definitely agree that today -- with the current systems we have and the environment that the companies who make them operate -- the problem is extra hard. My recurring thought on the matter is that we need to toss aside things like backward compatibility and software portability (ie, recreate a computing system from the ground up) in order to have what we are talking about. I’m not sure about that because I can’t see what advantage that has over just building a VM that can leverage existing platform work, but I am open to being convinced. However, what is not clear, and which nobody articulates, is how such a tabula-rasa would be different and not just dead end again. > At the end of the day we are still in the world of C and Unix and I don't think we're going to find what we are looking for so long as that remains the case. This isn’t clear to me. Given that the entire platform HyperCard ran on can be trivially emulated in a browser in JavaScript, C and Unix aren’t standing in the way of building something better. Nobody being able to say what it would even look like is the real problem.
- creata 5y ago
  > neither were scalable What do you mean by "scalable"?
  - zepto 5y ago
    From another reply: > The spirit of these things is some kind of ubiquitous and powerful and yet progressively accessible programmability and composability of the entire system. They gesture towards it but in practice are limited in how far they can get.

by scroot 5y ago

zepto 5y ago

Hmm. I don’t see HyperCard or Applescript as better than anything we have now. They are indicative of a direction, but neither were scalable. Shortcuts seems better than either of them. I see smalltalk as a great vision, but the fact is hasn’t gone further isn’t accidental. It’s certainly not easier to build an app in Squeak, for example, than it is to use XCode and build one using SwiftUI. I am personally of the opinion that nobody has actually done better in reality, even if they have a preferable vision.

scroot 5y ago
> I don’t see HyperCard or Applescript as better than anything we have now. The way they worked holistically on their systems at the time and brought users into the fold was certainly better than what we have now. I don't know of anything at present that is equivalent to that relationship -- on OSX or any of the Unicies, for that matter. To be clear I'm not suggesting a Hypercard clone for the modern era, but more of the "spirit" of the thing. Regular users as authors is one part of that. Today all of computing seems geared towards users as consumers. To me the reasons for this are obvious.
- zepto 5y ago
  I don’t see how there was anything holistic about HyperCard. It wasn’t really much different from Visual Basic except for the Card and Link metaphor, which was good for creating scaffolding without having to start coding first. Database builders like FileMaker or multimedia tools like Macromedia director, and Flash, are in the same family of tool. Even PowerPoint. There was certainly nothing specially integrated about it. It was just a tool. The card metaphor was a good way to build quick interactive presentations, and that was better for a lot of tasks than breaking out a code editor, but that’s all it was. AppleScript is a ridiculously awkward programming language, coupled with a cumbersome way for apps to publish an API, along with some simple coordination primitives. You could imagine a great programming language and a simple mechanism for apps to expose their functionality, but this was not it. > but more of the "spirit" of the thing. Right. My point is that there is nothing these old technologies do that isn’t done way better today. The spirit, I agree, is lost. > Regular users as authors is one part of that. I agree with this too. > Today all of computing seems geared towards users as consumers. Except for the giant stack of programming languages, creative tools, etc, all of which are vastly more end user programmable than anything from the HyperCard or even smalltalk era. Think about blender, Pythonista, gnuradio, Swift playgrounds. Programmability is everywhere. > To me the reasons for this are obvious. That’s where we differ. I think there are enough people who want this thing that if it was that easy we’d have it by now. We can argue that it’s not in Apple’s interest to make this thing (although I think that’s false, and they are trying as hard any one to make programming more accessible). Even if that were true, it doesn’t explain why things are no better on Linux. The spirit of these things is some kind of ubiquitous and powerful and yet progressively accessible programmability and composability of the entire system. That just isn’t something that they actually offered, even though they gestured towards it. It turns out to be a hard problem.
  - scroot 5y ago
    I don't want to drone on about this too much longer since we obviously disagree about some of the big points here (and agree about the "direction," which is more important anyway), but: > I don’t see how there was anything holistic about HyperCard. It wasn’t really much different from Visual Basic except for the Card and Link metaphor, which was good for creating scaffolding without having to start coding first. Database builders like FileMaker or multimedia tools like Macromedia director, and Flash, are in the same family of tool. Even PowerPoint. There was certainly nothing specially integrated about it. It was just a tool. If you look at, say System 7 and the versions of Hypercard that ran on it you'll see that this isn't true. One could control important "outer" functions of the whole operating system from within Hypercard using its own conception of the world, which I would say counts as special integration. The UI even looked quite similar to the rest of the system, making it "real". There was a kind of seamlessness there, and it came before things like PowerPoint etc. Also it was more than just presentations. Non-"programmer" Mac users were building all sorts of things, from zines to point-of-sale systems for their local businesses. At one point in the early 1990s Apple estimated that there were 4 million authors creating their own stacks. I definitely agree that today -- with the current systems we have and the environment that the companies who make them operate -- the problem is extra hard. My recurring thought on the matter is that we need to toss aside things like backward compatibility and software portability (ie, recreate a computing system from the ground up) in order to have what we are talking about. At the end of the day we are still in the world of C and Unix and I don't think we're going to find what we are looking for so long as that remains the case.
    - zepto 5y ago
      > One could control important "outer" functions of the whole operating system from within Hypercard using its own conception of the world, which I would say counts as special integration. Ok - this sounds interesting, but what does it do that can’t be done by VB? > The UI even looked quite similar to the rest of the system, making it "real". This is an important quality, but absolutely one shared by VB and database builders. > There was a kind of seamlessness there, and it came before things like PowerPoint etc. Yes, that it was early and beloved is not in dispute. My point is that it’s not special beyond that, and nothing has been lost. > Also it was more than just presentations. Ok, but that straw-man’s the other tools I mentioned. I mentioned a bunch of things that go far beyond HyperCard in their programmability. > Non-"programmer" Mac users were building all sorts of things, from zines to point-of-sale systems for their local businesses. Zines are augmented presentations. Point of sale systems require programming, and are the canonical example of what database builders are used for today. > At one point in the early 1990s Apple estimated that there were 4 million authors creating their own stacks. Ok, but what point are you making with that. Probably hundreds of millions of people have created a PowerPoint, but how many of them have programmed a behavior using the embedded basic? It’s quite obvious that only a tiny fraction of those 4 million people did anything more than simple presentations. > I definitely agree that today -- with the current systems we have and the environment that the companies who make them operate -- the problem is extra hard. My recurring thought on the matter is that we need to toss aside things like backward compatibility and software portability (ie, recreate a computing system from the ground up) in order to have what we are talking about. I’m not sure about that because I can’t see what advantage that has over just building a VM that can leverage existing platform work, but I am open to being convinced. However, what is not clear, and which nobody articulates, is how such a tabula-rasa would be different and not just dead end again. > At the end of the day we are still in the world of C and Unix and I don't think we're going to find what we are looking for so long as that remains the case. This isn’t clear to me. Given that the entire platform HyperCard ran on can be trivially emulated in a browser in JavaScript, C and Unix aren’t standing in the way of building something better. Nobody being able to say what it would even look like is the real problem.
creata 5y ago
> neither were scalable What do you mean by "scalable"?
- zepto 5y ago
  From another reply: > The spirit of these things is some kind of ubiquitous and powerful and yet progressively accessible programmability and composability of the entire system. They gesture towards it but in practice are limited in how far they can get.