9 ms·

Hypercard Simulator

231 points by alxmng 5y ago

throwthere 5y ago
For those who weren't in elementary school in the 90s, Hypercard was the OG no-code platform.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  Not every country had Macs on elementary school in the 90s, specially outside US.
  - hoppyhoppy2 5y ago
    I learned how to use Hypercard for Windows at school in the late 90s! (My school's computers all ran MS-DOS or Windows.)
    - hoppyhoppy2 5y ago
      correction: I believe it was actually HyperStudio for Windows.
rileyphone 5y ago
Recently I’ve been on something of a HyperCard kick despite being too young to have ever used it. The impression I’ve gotten of it, as a tool that was radically simple to use and create with, leads me to believe there is some spark of genius within it. Within the greater purview of end-user development it still shines as one of the greatest successes. Still waiting for the dream to be realized.
zapstar 5y ago
HyperCard was ahead of its time, and I still don’t think we’ve seen a solution as approachable and flexible.
- analog31 5y ago
  Aside from Bill Atkinson simply being a genius, a shining trait of HC is that it didn't try to do everything. There was a successor to HC called SuperCard (which I used to create a printed circuit board drawing app). SC added all of the features "missing" from HC, such as a large variety of different window types. In the process, it became harder to use, for not very much gain. Having both HC and SC on my computer, I invariably reached for HC, even when it meant that my programs didn't look quite as snappy. For me, HC was what made it tolerable to use a Mac. I did some pretty outrageous things with it, such as controlling a primitive custom machine tool. I did have to create some "code resources" in Pascal or C to access my hardware interfaces, but those codes were often on the order of a couple dozen lines, and rarely needed to be maintained. Visual Basic made the same mistake. The more "professional" it became, the harder it was for the people who were actually interested in using it. I stuck with VB5 long after VB.NET came out.
  - gcanyon 5y ago
    That's an interesting point about not doing everything. Livecode is a more powerful, capable tool very much based on HC, and while it has a great power-to-complexity ratio, I don't think it's (made up numbers) 5x more powerful, but 8x more complex. https://livecode.com/ https://livecode.com/
  - badsectoracula 5y ago
    This reminded me of the comments i've read online from modders about the modding tools for Neverwinter Nights 1 vs those of Neverwinter Nights 2. Both are very moddable games but the NWN1 tools were actually designed as part of the product (for many the official campaign was just a demo for the tools) and were very simple to use - but also very limited (e.g. areas could only be made by placing prefabricated tiles - though you could make your own tiles with external tools and also add additional objects on top of them, most of the area work was placing tiles together). On the other hand NWN2 was more freeform, had better visuals and features, allowed arbitrary terrain sculpting, etc but that also made it much more complicated to use. As a result NWN1 has a ton more modules (campaigns/mods) for it than NWN2 and many people who spent considerable time on NWN1 never moved to NWN2 due to the increased complexity. To this day i often find comments about how simple and easy the NWN1 tools were, but i don't remember ever reading anything like that for NWN2 :-P.
sharkweek 5y ago
Now somebody build me a Creative Writer simulator with mascot McZee. I still remember the little jingle theme song and randomly hum it to this day.
- beaugunderson 5y ago
  while you can't simulate it, you can emulate it, complete with theme song! https://archive.org/details/WRITER_WIN https://archive.org/details/WRITER_WIN
solarmist 5y ago
Did the source for HyperCard ever get released?
- rgovostes 5y ago
  I had heard that the sources were donated to the Computer History Museum along with MacPaint and QuickDraw, also invented by Atkinson. However they have not released it. https://computerhistory.org/blog/macpaint-and-quickdraw-source-code/ https://computerhistory.org/blog/macpaint-and-quickdraw-sour...
  - pvg 5y ago
    That link mentions MacPaint and QuickDraw and links the source archives right there. HyperCard doesn't come up.
  - cmrdporcupine 5y ago
    The sources for the Lisa's OS were also supposed to get donated to the CHM many years ago but have never materialized.
pavlov 5y ago
The seamless transition between editing and interaction modes is still unparalleled. There's basically no difference between using something and creating it. I recall this was a very empowering feeling on the original Mac when I was a child.
jheitzeb 5y ago
Was reading about Bill after seeing this post and found this quote: “Inspired by a mind-expanding LSD journey in 1985, I designed the HyperCard authoring system…” - Bill Atkinson
- hedgehog 5y ago
  He's an interesting guy. Went on to do some really good nature photography, I used to see his work on the wall at Cafe Borrone in Menlo Park.
- rileyphone 5y ago
  This is the thread for the interview that’s from - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24083738 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24083738
rgovostes 5y ago
I started out with HyperCard and when I outgrew it, upgraded to REALbasic, a cross-platform Visual Basic clone (now Xojo). When I started college I switched to writing C++, which I perceived as a more "professional" language, but in doing so left the GUI behind and started producing almost exclusively command-line tools. When I try to write a GUI app these days, I'm stunned by how much harder it seems. As an elementary school student I could churn out HyperCard stacks without being able to search Google, ask on StackOverflow, or watch a YouTube tutorial. One of the things modern tools left behind is how the code and UI were bound together. In HyperCard or REALbasic, the code for what a button does is "inside" the button, so if you want to know how it works or modify its behavior, you just "open it up" it in the editor. Stringing together IBActions or attaching event handlers to DOM elements may be a more general solution, but most of the time the distance it introduces between the button and its effect is just extra cognitive overhead.
- egypturnash 5y ago
  One of the things modern tools left behind is how the code and UI were bound together. For a while, Flash had this, and it was one of the things that made it fun and easy to hack stuff together with. Then Actionscript 3 happened and that wasn't allowed any more because AS3 was a Serious Language for Serious Developers. (Actionscript 1 was a horrible thing you could only enter by selecting keywords from a dropdown menu, it was really terrible for doing anything more than basic interactivity. AS2 hit a real sweet spot of being something you could quickly type into a text box and tie closely to the objects in the editor.)
  - 5- 5y ago
    > Actionscript 1 was a horrible thing you could only enter by selecting keywords from a dropdown menu my memory of those times is a bit fuzzy, but according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ActionScript#Timeline_by_ActionScript_version https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ActionScript#Timeline_by_Actio... what you describe was 'actions' prior to flash 5, which introduced actionscript1 which was a normal text-based scripting language. edit: i just had to check (thanks -- i now got to enjoy flash 5 on my windows 2000 install). the 'object actions' editor in flash 5 has a 'normal/expert mode' toggle, where 'normal' (the default) is the menu-based interface as you describe and 'expert' is the normal text editor.
soapdog 5y ago
Couple years ago I wrote a blog post about how LiveCode is a modern day HyperCard: https://andregarzia.com/2019/07/livecode-is-a-modern-day-hypercard.html https://andregarzia.com/2019/07/livecode-is-a-modern-day-hyp... I still believe that people who enjoy HyperCard or want to experience something similar but with current day comforts should check HyperCard out. Oh, while I wrote that post I was working for LiveCode but I'm no longer with them. Still like them a lot though.
- D-Coder 5y ago
  LiveCode is great. I have half a dozen LiveCode apps (some originally in HyperCard!) that I use every day. Disclaimer: Just a happy customer.
- jawngee 5y ago
  Livecode's pricing is insane.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - tomcam 5y ago
    Compared to what products supporting so many platforms with a commercial quality IDE, and regular updates? Can you find even a single competitor?
    - jawngee 5y ago
      Who cares about competitors when you barely have any market share for yourself? You can be the greatest IDE in the world, but if barely anybody is using you how great are you really? The fact that their lowest pricing tier ties the apps to the account is bonkers too. If that account lapses in payment, any apps built by the account cease functioning. Not even Apple is that brazen if your developer account lapses.
      - soapdog 5y ago
abemiller 5y ago
Everyone in this thread reminiscing about hypercard and how more modern no-code tools still have not matched its amazing functionality and UI. So, what's to stop someone today from making a modern hypercard clone? I imagine something which has the exact same UI logic as hypercard and allows projects to be exported as JavaScript WebApps. Is it not possible? Seems like it should exist! Inviting any volunteers...
- hyperhello 5y ago
  We could call it HyperCardSimulator.com :-D I’m the developer of this, and particularly proud that not only can you Import stacks, icons and all, but you can Export single page web apps that end in .stack.html and run in any modern browser! It’s all in the hamburger menu.
  - buescher 5y ago
    Bravo! But, I picked a stack at random from archive.org, probably one that was too complex, and it just threw an error when I tried to import it. What are some limitations to be aware of?
    - hyperhello 5y ago
      The importer will open StuffIt and old OS disk images just like archive.org gives you, but something unexpected could have gone wrong. I’ll probably do a few bug fixes tonight.
  - ChrisArchitect 5y ago
    was just digging to find more about this/you -- and noticed it's similar to that WildCard thing from not so long ago?? Did you just expand/shift it over to the new domain or?
    - ChrisArchitect 5y ago
      https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29284296 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29284296
drallison 5y ago
"Simulator", the term, is misused in this post. In common usage, an implementation of a programming system is not called a "simulation". For example, the"cross-platform Visual Basic clone" mentioned by rgovostes in the comments is not called a "Visual Basic simulation". For common usage, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulation and the associated disambiguation page. Consult Google for alternative usage. Language is dynamic, fluid, and occasionally fickle, but for effective communication we need to stick with commonly accepted usage unless there is good reason to depart from same.
FullyFunctional 5y ago
Kudos on HyperCard Simulator, brings back good memories. HyperCard was brilliant but as others mentioned, partly this was enabled by limiting the scope. You still had to learn the scripting language though. While dramatically different, MIT's Scratch enables kids (and older "kids", ahem) to experience the same immediacy and ease of use and having witness the output of my 10 yo, I dare say he could produce anything I could do with HyperCard and more with Scratch.
- joe_g_young 5y ago
  I would be interested in a HyperCard and scratch hybrid application.
cadr 5y ago
This is very cool! hyperhello - question: is the "how do I make cards?" button at the bottom of one of the cards supposed to do anything? It doesn't seem to for me.
- hyperhello 5y ago
  It should go to the next card. Can you tell me what is your device type and the name of your browser? Unfortunately most bugs of a web page are just other browsers doing unexpected things that I find out about later.
  - cadr 5y ago
    I'm on macOS 12.1 and Chrome 97.0.4692.99. However, I have since cleared cookies and I can't reproduce it now - all works as you say. Very cool project!
Daub 5y ago
Fun fact. On both Macs and PCs, The way that your mouse cursor turns into a finger pointing hand is inherited from Hypercard.

Hypercard Simulator

231 points by alxmng 5y ago

throwthere 5y ago

For those who weren't in elementary school in the 90s, Hypercard was the OG no-code platform.

pjmlp 5y ago
Not every country had Macs on elementary school in the 90s, specially outside US.
- hoppyhoppy2 5y ago
  I learned how to use Hypercard for Windows at school in the late 90s! (My school's computers all ran MS-DOS or Windows.)
  - hoppyhoppy2 5y ago
    correction: I believe it was actually HyperStudio for Windows.

rileyphone 5y ago

Recently I’ve been on something of a HyperCard kick despite being too young to have ever used it. The impression I’ve gotten of it, as a tool that was radically simple to use and create with, leads me to believe there is some spark of genius within it. Within the greater purview of end-user development it still shines as one of the greatest successes. Still waiting for the dream to be realized.

zapstar 5y ago

HyperCard was ahead of its time, and I still don’t think we’ve seen a solution as approachable and flexible.

analog31 5y ago
Aside from Bill Atkinson simply being a genius, a shining trait of HC is that it didn't try to do everything. There was a successor to HC called SuperCard (which I used to create a printed circuit board drawing app). SC added all of the features "missing" from HC, such as a large variety of different window types. In the process, it became harder to use, for not very much gain. Having both HC and SC on my computer, I invariably reached for HC, even when it meant that my programs didn't look quite as snappy. For me, HC was what made it tolerable to use a Mac. I did some pretty outrageous things with it, such as controlling a primitive custom machine tool. I did have to create some "code resources" in Pascal or C to access my hardware interfaces, but those codes were often on the order of a couple dozen lines, and rarely needed to be maintained. Visual Basic made the same mistake. The more "professional" it became, the harder it was for the people who were actually interested in using it. I stuck with VB5 long after VB.NET came out.
- gcanyon 5y ago
  That's an interesting point about not doing everything. Livecode is a more powerful, capable tool very much based on HC, and while it has a great power-to-complexity ratio, I don't think it's (made up numbers) 5x more powerful, but 8x more complex. https://livecode.com/ https://livecode.com/
- badsectoracula 5y ago
  This reminded me of the comments i've read online from modders about the modding tools for Neverwinter Nights 1 vs those of Neverwinter Nights 2. Both are very moddable games but the NWN1 tools were actually designed as part of the product (for many the official campaign was just a demo for the tools) and were very simple to use - but also very limited (e.g. areas could only be made by placing prefabricated tiles - though you could make your own tiles with external tools and also add additional objects on top of them, most of the area work was placing tiles together). On the other hand NWN2 was more freeform, had better visuals and features, allowed arbitrary terrain sculpting, etc but that also made it much more complicated to use. As a result NWN1 has a ton more modules (campaigns/mods) for it than NWN2 and many people who spent considerable time on NWN1 never moved to NWN2 due to the increased complexity. To this day i often find comments about how simple and easy the NWN1 tools were, but i don't remember ever reading anything like that for NWN2 :-P.

sharkweek 5y ago

Now somebody build me a Creative Writer simulator with mascot McZee. I still remember the little jingle theme song and randomly hum it to this day.

beaugunderson 5y ago
while you can't simulate it, you can emulate it, complete with theme song! https://archive.org/details/WRITER_WIN https://archive.org/details/WRITER_WIN

solarmist 5y ago

Did the source for HyperCard ever get released?

rgovostes 5y ago
I had heard that the sources were donated to the Computer History Museum along with MacPaint and QuickDraw, also invented by Atkinson. However they have not released it. https://computerhistory.org/blog/macpaint-and-quickdraw-source-code/ https://computerhistory.org/blog/macpaint-and-quickdraw-sour...
- pvg 5y ago
  That link mentions MacPaint and QuickDraw and links the source archives right there. HyperCard doesn't come up.
- cmrdporcupine 5y ago
  The sources for the Lisa's OS were also supposed to get donated to the CHM many years ago but have never materialized.

pavlov 5y ago

The seamless transition between editing and interaction modes is still unparalleled. There's basically no difference between using something and creating it. I recall this was a very empowering feeling on the original Mac when I was a child.

jheitzeb 5y ago

Was reading about Bill after seeing this post and found this quote: “Inspired by a mind-expanding LSD journey in 1985, I designed the HyperCard authoring system…” - Bill Atkinson

hedgehog 5y ago
He's an interesting guy. Went on to do some really good nature photography, I used to see his work on the wall at Cafe Borrone in Menlo Park.
rileyphone 5y ago
This is the thread for the interview that’s from - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24083738 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24083738

rgovostes 5y ago

I started out with HyperCard and when I outgrew it, upgraded to REALbasic, a cross-platform Visual Basic clone (now Xojo). When I started college I switched to writing C++, which I perceived as a more "professional" language, but in doing so left the GUI behind and started producing almost exclusively command-line tools. When I try to write a GUI app these days, I'm stunned by how much harder it seems. As an elementary school student I could churn out HyperCard stacks without being able to search Google, ask on StackOverflow, or watch a YouTube tutorial. One of the things modern tools left behind is how the code and UI were bound together. In HyperCard or REALbasic, the code for what a button does is "inside" the button, so if you want to know how it works or modify its behavior, you just "open it up" it in the editor. Stringing together IBActions or attaching event handlers to DOM elements may be a more general solution, but most of the time the distance it introduces between the button and its effect is just extra cognitive overhead.

egypturnash 5y ago
One of the things modern tools left behind is how the code and UI were bound together. For a while, Flash had this, and it was one of the things that made it fun and easy to hack stuff together with. Then Actionscript 3 happened and that wasn't allowed any more because AS3 was a Serious Language for Serious Developers. (Actionscript 1 was a horrible thing you could only enter by selecting keywords from a dropdown menu, it was really terrible for doing anything more than basic interactivity. AS2 hit a real sweet spot of being something you could quickly type into a text box and tie closely to the objects in the editor.)
- 5- 5y ago
  > Actionscript 1 was a horrible thing you could only enter by selecting keywords from a dropdown menu my memory of those times is a bit fuzzy, but according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ActionScript#Timeline_by_ActionScript_version https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ActionScript#Timeline_by_Actio... what you describe was 'actions' prior to flash 5, which introduced actionscript1 which was a normal text-based scripting language. edit: i just had to check (thanks -- i now got to enjoy flash 5 on my windows 2000 install). the 'object actions' editor in flash 5 has a 'normal/expert mode' toggle, where 'normal' (the default) is the menu-based interface as you describe and 'expert' is the normal text editor.

soapdog 5y ago

Couple years ago I wrote a blog post about how LiveCode is a modern day HyperCard: https://andregarzia.com/2019/07/livecode-is-a-modern-day-hypercard.html https://andregarzia.com/2019/07/livecode-is-a-modern-day-hyp... I still believe that people who enjoy HyperCard or want to experience something similar but with current day comforts should check HyperCard out. Oh, while I wrote that post I was working for LiveCode but I'm no longer with them. Still like them a lot though.

D-Coder 5y ago
LiveCode is great. I have half a dozen LiveCode apps (some originally in HyperCard!) that I use every day. Disclaimer: Just a happy customer.
jawngee 5y ago
Livecode's pricing is insane.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- tomcam 5y ago
  Compared to what products supporting so many platforms with a commercial quality IDE, and regular updates? Can you find even a single competitor?
  - jawngee 5y ago
    Who cares about competitors when you barely have any market share for yourself? You can be the greatest IDE in the world, but if barely anybody is using you how great are you really? The fact that their lowest pricing tier ties the apps to the account is bonkers too. If that account lapses in payment, any apps built by the account cease functioning. Not even Apple is that brazen if your developer account lapses.
    - soapdog 5y ago

abemiller 5y ago

Everyone in this thread reminiscing about hypercard and how more modern no-code tools still have not matched its amazing functionality and UI. So, what's to stop someone today from making a modern hypercard clone? I imagine something which has the exact same UI logic as hypercard and allows projects to be exported as JavaScript WebApps. Is it not possible? Seems like it should exist! Inviting any volunteers...

hyperhello 5y ago
We could call it HyperCardSimulator.com :-D I’m the developer of this, and particularly proud that not only can you Import stacks, icons and all, but you can Export single page web apps that end in .stack.html and run in any modern browser! It’s all in the hamburger menu.
- buescher 5y ago
  Bravo! But, I picked a stack at random from archive.org, probably one that was too complex, and it just threw an error when I tried to import it. What are some limitations to be aware of?
  - hyperhello 5y ago
    The importer will open StuffIt and old OS disk images just like archive.org gives you, but something unexpected could have gone wrong. I’ll probably do a few bug fixes tonight.
- ChrisArchitect 5y ago
  was just digging to find more about this/you -- and noticed it's similar to that WildCard thing from not so long ago?? Did you just expand/shift it over to the new domain or?
  - ChrisArchitect 5y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29284296 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29284296

drallison 5y ago

"Simulator", the term, is misused in this post. In common usage, an implementation of a programming system is not called a "simulation". For example, the"cross-platform Visual Basic clone" mentioned by rgovostes in the comments is not called a "Visual Basic simulation". For common usage, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulation and the associated disambiguation page. Consult Google for alternative usage. Language is dynamic, fluid, and occasionally fickle, but for effective communication we need to stick with commonly accepted usage unless there is good reason to depart from same.

FullyFunctional 5y ago

Kudos on HyperCard Simulator, brings back good memories. HyperCard was brilliant but as others mentioned, partly this was enabled by limiting the scope. You still had to learn the scripting language though. While dramatically different, MIT's Scratch enables kids (and older "kids", ahem) to experience the same immediacy and ease of use and having witness the output of my 10 yo, I dare say he could produce anything I could do with HyperCard and more with Scratch.

joe_g_young 5y ago
I would be interested in a HyperCard and scratch hybrid application.

cadr 5y ago

This is very cool! hyperhello - question: is the "how do I make cards?" button at the bottom of one of the cards supposed to do anything? It doesn't seem to for me.

hyperhello 5y ago
It should go to the next card. Can you tell me what is your device type and the name of your browser? Unfortunately most bugs of a web page are just other browsers doing unexpected things that I find out about later.
- cadr 5y ago
  I'm on macOS 12.1 and Chrome 97.0.4692.99. However, I have since cleared cookies and I can't reproduce it now - all works as you say. Very cool project!

Daub 5y ago

Fun fact. On both Macs and PCs, The way that your mouse cursor turns into a finger pointing hand is inherited from Hypercard.