4 ms·

All this BASIC drama seems so silly now.

WillAdams 2y ago
It could have saved the early Mac from being an application-driven appliance and allowing average users to create graphical applications --- instead, that had to wait until HyperCard was released. A notable example of that promise was an early game, _The Manhole_ (billed as "Where Alice would have gone if Alice had had HyperCard") --- the developers went on to make a little game on CD-ROM known as _Myst_. For an alternate spin on how a competitor was developed: https://yourstory.com/2017/06/techie-tuesdays-alan-cooper https://yourstory.com/2017/06/techie-tuesdays-alan-cooper
analog31 2y ago
I got my first "real" computer in 1984, though I had owned a Timex-Sinclair ZX81 prior to that. I had already learned programming, and was quite interested in it. I chose MS-DOS. but had already tried a Mac, and had seen a demo of the Apple Lisa. The lack of Mac programming tools "for the rest of us" was noticeable, and contributed to an impression that Apple was indifferent or even hostile to small scale developers. The Mac was referred to as a "closed box." This in turn led to people preferring MS-DOS for small scale development of both software and hardware, even if we could never hope to match the quality of Apple's GUI. I don't think this ever changed, through upheavals of both the Apple and Microsoft worlds. I used a Mac from 1993 to 1997, and wrote a couple of magazine articles on Mac hardware interfacing. I did all of my development in HyperCard except for creating a couple of "code resources" in C to access hardware functions. Being a Mac hardware hacker was a pretty lonely place. Today, I won't touch any development tool that isn't platform independent, so the issue has been largely mooted for me.
pjmlp 2y ago
There is enough programming language drama going on still, we only got a change of the main characters. BASIC might be out, but there is enough of Python, JS, PHP, C, C++, Go, Rust, Java, .NET, ... to chose from.
- rbanffy 2y ago
  One of the things I like about the Python community is the overall lack of drama (compared to other languages of similarly high profile).

It could have saved the early Mac from being an application-driven appliance and allowing average users to create graphical applications --- instead, that had to wait until HyperCard was released. A notable example of that promise was an early game, _The Manhole_ (billed as "Where Alice would have gone if Alice had had HyperCard") --- the developers went on to make a little game on CD-ROM known as _Myst_. For an alternate spin on how a competitor was developed: https://yourstory.com/2017/06/techie-tuesdays-alan-cooper https://yourstory.com/2017/06/techie-tuesdays-alan-cooper

analog31 2y ago

I got my first "real" computer in 1984, though I had owned a Timex-Sinclair ZX81 prior to that. I had already learned programming, and was quite interested in it. I chose MS-DOS. but had already tried a Mac, and had seen a demo of the Apple Lisa. The lack of Mac programming tools "for the rest of us" was noticeable, and contributed to an impression that Apple was indifferent or even hostile to small scale developers. The Mac was referred to as a "closed box." This in turn led to people preferring MS-DOS for small scale development of both software and hardware, even if we could never hope to match the quality of Apple's GUI. I don't think this ever changed, through upheavals of both the Apple and Microsoft worlds. I used a Mac from 1993 to 1997, and wrote a couple of magazine articles on Mac hardware interfacing. I did all of my development in HyperCard except for creating a couple of "code resources" in C to access hardware functions. Being a Mac hardware hacker was a pretty lonely place. Today, I won't touch any development tool that isn't platform independent, so the issue has been largely mooted for me.

pjmlp 2y ago

There is enough programming language drama going on still, we only got a change of the main characters. BASIC might be out, but there is enough of Python, JS, PHP, C, C++, Go, Rust, Java, .NET, ... to chose from.

rbanffy 2y ago
One of the things I like about the Python community is the overall lack of drama (compared to other languages of similarly high profile).