11 ms·

Bill Atkinson has died

1589 points by romanhn 1y ago

https://facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10238073579963378&id=1378467145 https://facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10238073579963378&...

jmwilson 1y ago
HyperCard was my introduction to programming and delivered on the vision of personal computing as "bicycle for the mind." RIP
animanoir 1y ago
[dead]
agumonkey 1y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atkinson_dithering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atkinson_dithering and so many other things rip
msie 1y ago
RIP programming god.
WillAdams 1y ago
Some notable stories from Folklore.org: https://www.folklore.org/Joining_Apple_Computer.html https://www.folklore.org/Joining_Apple_Computer.html https://www.folklore.org/Negative_2000_Lines_Of_Code.html https://www.folklore.org/Negative_2000_Lines_Of_Code.html --- something to bring up whenever lines of code as a metric is put forward https://www.folklore.org/Rosings_Rascals.html https://www.folklore.org/Rosings_Rascals.html --- story of how the Macintosh Finder came to be https://www.folklore.org/I_Still_Remember_Regions.html https://www.folklore.org/I_Still_Remember_Regions.html --- surviving a car accident
- LorenDB 1y ago
  The lines of code story is a timeless classic.
  - 90s_dev 1y ago
    > He thought and wrote "-2000 lines". Management stopped asking Bill to fill out the form. This lesson stuck with me for years. Final results alone are measurable, not productivity.
    - worik 1y ago
      Imagine being the manager that had to assess Bill Atkinson's productivity! > Final results alone are measurable Not even those, for individuals Mostly we work in teams. I myself like to work in "plumbing" that is arbitrarily far from "final results"
  - garciasn 1y ago
    Score code on line count and runtime golf. Shorter, faster, and fastest time to completion is best. Code that’s 4K and took slightly less time to write but runs slightly faster than code that’s 400 bytes that took another 30m to write still doesn’t get the best score.
    - dan-robertson 1y ago
      I kind think metrics are not the answer and instead one needs taste. Obviously performance is multidimensional both in what one measures (latency vs throughput) and as a function of the input. The solution you imagine that is slightly faster in the test could avoid (or introduce) different worst-case or asymptotic behaviour, for example.
      - garciasn 1y ago
        I argue we shouldn’t be doing this at all; but, if we have to do to whatever insanely arbitrary metric a project/product/eng leader wants, this is probably a better metric than code length.
    - pmoriarty 1y ago
      > Shorter, faster, and fastest time to completion is best. What about correctness, robustness, readability, clarity, maintainability?
- deleted 1y ago
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- deleted 1y ago
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- leoc 1y ago
  “Busy Being Born” https://www.folklore.org/Busy_Being_Born.html https://www.folklore.org/Busy_Being_Born.html , with its priceless early glimpses of the Lisa/Mac UI preserved in Polaroid photos, may be the best.
  - bombcar 1y ago
    This shows amazing foresight on Bill's part. It would have been easy for all that to be lost.
  - pmoriarty 1y ago
    Here is a video of Bill showing and discussing those Polaroids: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Qg0mHFcB510 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Qg0mHFcB510
fotta 1y ago
Wow. Rest in peace Bill. I think he is deserving of a black stripe up top.
- djmips 1y ago
  100%
- zahlman 1y ago
  You can set your 'topcolor' in preferences, but this will obscure the links in the sidebar (barring local CSS hacking).
  - froggertoaster 1y ago
    I think you missed the point.
    - zahlman 1y ago
      What other stripe would there be to refer to? I haven't seen anything like that here.
      - Centigonal 1y ago
        Check the site now. HN has a "flag at half-mast" feature for when tech visionaries are freed by the great GC of the cosmos.
        zahlman 1y ago
        Ah, I had to change topcolor back to notice....
soulofmischief 1y ago
Atkinson is a legendary UX pioneer. Great technical skill and a deep understanding of the principles of interaction. His work, from the double click to HyperCard, continues to inspire my own work. You will be missed.
pcunite 1y ago
"Some say Steve used me, but I say he harnessed and motivated me, and drew out my best creative energy." - Bill Atkinson
asveikau 1y ago
Some of his old demos of graphics capabilities on the Mac or hypercard are around on YouTube, and I watched some maybe 10 years ago. He displayed not just the tech chops but he was a good communicator. RIP.
matthewn 1y ago
In an alternate timeline, HyperCard was not allowed to wither and die, but instead continued to mature, embraced the web, and inspired an entire genre of software-creating software. In this timeline, people shape their computing experiences as easily as one might sculpt a piece of clay, creating personal apps that make perfect sense to them and fit like a glove; computing devices actually become (for everyone, not just programmers) the "bicycle for the mind" that Steve Jobs spoke of. I think this is the timeline that Atkinson envisioned, and I wish I lived in it. We've lost a true visionary. Memory eternal!
- asveikau 1y ago
  Maybe there's some sense of longing for a tool that's similar today, but there's no way of knowing how much hypercard did have the impact you are talking about. For example many of us reading here experienced HyperCard. It planted seeds in our future endeavors. I remember in elementary school, I had some computer lab classes where the whole class worked in hypercard on some task. Multiply that by however many classrooms did something like that in the 80s and 90s. That's a lot of brains that can be influenced and have been. We can judge it as a success in its own right, even if it never entered the next paradigm or never had quite an equivalent later on.
  - cortesoft 1y ago
    HyperCard was the foundation of my programming career. I treated the HyperCard Bible like an actual Bible.
    - leakycap 1y ago
      I miss the days of For Dummies, Bibles, and all the rest. If you'd read that thing carefully a few times, you usually knew your stuff. There was a finish line. Modern continual versioning and constant updates means there is no finish line. No Bible could ever be printed. Ah, nostalgia.
      - mark-r 1y ago
rcarmo 1y ago
Oh. I came here to pass the time as I built a TinyMac with a Pi and was compiling BasiliskII in SDL mode. I'm quite saddened by the news, as Bill was one of the people who had the most influence in the technical design of early Macs (and a brilliant engineer for all accounts). Why isn't the black bar up atop the site?
- _mlbt 1y ago
  He’s definitely deserving of the black bar. This post is only an hour old as I’m writing this, so give it time. It’s a weekend, and as far as I’m aware there are only 2 mods, unless there are others empowered to turn on the black bar in their absence.
dakiol 1y ago
RIP. It still suprises me that people with resources die so early (he died at 74).
- deadbabe 1y ago
  Resources only help you reach your genetic potential, but if you’re just not built for longevity you still may not live long. And some people with no resources, no reason to live, but have incredible genetics will linger for many years beyond what people think is possible, like a weed.
  - jamessinghal 1y ago
    People without resources or purpose are a weed?
    - accrual 1y ago
      Like a weed, in the sense of living in spite of ones circumstances. For example, a person with limited resources living for a long time, which is like a weed with little sunlight still growing from a crack in concrete.
      - deadbabe 1y ago
        In contrast to some house plants that are meticulously watered and cared for in perfect conditions, and yet they still die in a week.
- andoando 1y ago
  I wouldnt consider 74 early.
  - saalweachter 1y ago
    It's not "he was so young", but it's still a few years shy of "he had a good, long life" IMO.
  - 1y ago
dkislyuk 1y ago
From Walter Isaacson's _Steve Jobs_: > One of Bill Atkinson’s amazing feats (which we are so accustomed to nowadays that we rarely marvel at it) was to allow the windows on a screen to overlap so that the “top” one clipped into the ones “below” it. Atkinson made it possible to move these windows around, just like shuffling papers on a desk, with those below becoming visible or hidden as you moved the top ones. Of course, on a computer screen there are no layers of pixels underneath the pixels that you see, so there are no windows actually lurking underneath the ones that appear to be on top. To create the illusion of overlapping windows requires complex coding that involves what are called “regions.” Atkinson pushed himself to make this trick work because he thought he had seen this capability during his visit to Xerox PARC. In fact the folks at PARC had never accomplished it, and they later told him they were amazed that he had done so. “I got a feeling for the empowering aspect of naïveté”, Atkinson said. “Because I didn’t know it couldn’t be done, I was enabled to do it.” He was working so hard that one morning, in a daze, he drove his Corvette into a parked truck and nearly killed himself. Jobs immediately drove to the hospital to see him. “We were pretty worried about you”, he said when Atkinson regained consciousness. Atkinson gave him a pained smile and replied, “Don’t worry, I still remember regions.”
- rjsw 1y ago
  I think the difference between the Apple and Xerox approach may be more complicated than the people at PARC not knowing how to do this. The Alto doesn't have a framebuffer, each window has its own buffer and the microcode walks the windows to work out what to put on each scanline.
  - JKCalhoun 1y ago
    Not doubting that, but what is the substantive difference here? Does the fact that there is a screen buffer on the Mac facilitate clipping that is otherwise not possible on the Alto?
    - lambdaone 1y ago
      It allows the Mac to use far less RAM to display overlapping windows, and doesn't require any extra hardware. Individual regions are refreshed independently of the rest of the screen, with occlusion, updates, and clipping managed automatically,
scrlk 1y ago
Bill Atkinson demoing MacPaint at the Macintosh introduction in 1984: https://youtu.be/1tQ5XwvjPmA?t=1781 https://youtu.be/1tQ5XwvjPmA?t=1781
- JKCalhoun 1y ago
  Plenty of interviews will Bill on YouTube. Example: https://youtu.be/dhlKTRU--VA https://youtu.be/dhlKTRU--VA Also, perhaps the General Magic documentary is a fun watch too: https://youtu.be/JQymn5flcek https://youtu.be/JQymn5flcek
gavmor 1y ago
If you haven't, check out the documentary[0] on General Magic which Bill co-founded in 1990. Among the more remarkable scenes in there is when a member of the public seems perplexed by the thought that they would even want to "check email from Times Square." An unthinkable future, but they thought it. And yet, most folks have never heard of General Magic. 0. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQymn5flcek https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQymn5flcek
- dboreham 1y ago
  Invaluable film if you believe Apple invented the smart phone.
  - gavmor 1y ago
    Invaluable film if you believe invention is what made Apple valuable.
- JKCalhoun 1y ago
  Atkinson at this timestamp: https://youtu.be/JQymn5flcek?si=2TMJ8b9zsR_Kitj-&t=1297 https://youtu.be/JQymn5flcek?si=2TMJ8b9zsR_Kitj-&t=1297 Also, it's here in the documentary that someone expresses the excitement anticipating the smart phone. It's hard to watch for me now and not shake my head, "Oh, it's not quite as wonderful as you imagined."
iainmerrick 1y ago
One of my favourite Atkinson stories -- I can't remember if this is on folklore.org or somewhere else -- is that he actually implemented editable text in MacPaint, by scanning the bitmap for character shapes, but chose not to ship that feature because it could never be perfect. Amazing technical skill and great taste and judgement.
- duskwuff 1y ago
  Here's the story - https://folklore.org/MacPaint_Evolution.html https://folklore.org/MacPaint_Evolution.html
mitchbob 1y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Atkinson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Atkinson Bill on Steve Jobs and HyperCard: https://youtu.be/kzKCZN3UsRQ?si=eNIsysWdrjp2tHwd https://youtu.be/kzKCZN3UsRQ?si=eNIsysWdrjp2tHwd Black bar, please.
- cm2187 1y ago
  worth watching the full show, was very interesting
mindslight 1y ago
[flagged]
- frou_dh 1y ago
  Are you doing a Comic-Book-Guy impersonation?
  - mindslight 1y ago
    No, just someone who isn't steeped in surveillance culture. My obtuseness is just a direct response to the obtuseness of the surveillance industry demanding "consent" when I'm trying to read about someone's death. I have also entered throwaway nyms for the online streams of family funerals that have tried to bundle abusive legal terms. What's socially gauche here is letting a moment of mourning turn into leverage for the surveillance industry.
- kalleboo 1y ago
  https://archive.md/W7iOf https://archive.md/W7iOf
  - mindslight 1y ago
    Thank you for that, actually. Archive.md is my go to for trashwalled news articles, somehow I didn't think to do that for a Faceboot URL. Probably because I don't respect Faceboot enough to imagine they operate with real URIs.
LightBug1 1y ago
Wow ... made my first app on Hypercard in high school ... Loved it. RIP Mr Bill Atkinson
edbaskerville 1y ago
I wish I could have met him before he died. I'm yet another child of HyperCard. It opened my mind to what computers could be for, and even though the last two decades have been full primarily of disappointment, I still hold onto that other path as a possibility, or even as a slice of reality---a few weeds growing in the cracks of our dystopian concrete.
TruffleLabs 1y ago
I loved his PhotoCard app as it allowed for image customization of the stamp and ability to be printed on very high quality card stock and ink.
dondakirme 1y ago
RIP
baumgarn 1y ago
I fondly remember creating simple narrative stories and games with HyperCard at 6 years old on my dad's Macintosh SE. It was my first contact with programming and a fundamental seed to using the computer as a creative tool. It has shaped my life in a substantial way. RIP Bill - HN bar should be blacked out.
kapitanjakc 1y ago
I've read stories about him on folklore. He was a good man and great engineer. RIP
JKCalhoun 1y ago
When I was on the ColorSync team at Apple we, the engineers, got an invite to his place-in-the-woods one day. I knew who he was at the time, but for some reason I felt I was more or less beholden to conversing only about color-related issues and how they applied to a computer workflow. Having retired, I have been kicking myself for some time not just chatting with him about ... whatever. He was at the time I met him very in to a kind of digital photography. My recollection was that he had a high-end drum scanner and was in fact scanning film negatives (medium format camera?) and then going with a digital workflow from that point on. I remember he was excited about the way that "darks" could be captured (with the scanner?). A straight analog workflow would, according to him, cause the darks to roll off (guessing the film was not the culprit then, perhaps the analog printing process). He excitedly showed us on his computer photos he took along the Pacific ocean of large rock outcroppings against the ocean — pointing out the detail that you could see in the shadow of the rocks. He was putting together a coffee table book of his photos at the time. I have to say that I mused at the time about a wealthy, retired, engineer who throws money at high end photo gear and suddenly thinks they're a photographer. I think I was weighing his "technical" approach to photography vs. a strictly artistic one. Although, having learned more about Ansel Adams technical chops, perhaps for the best photographers there is overlap.
- gxs 1y ago
  > I have to say that I mused at the time about a wealthy, retired, engineer who throws money at high end photo gear and suddenly thinks they're a photographer I think this says more about you than it does about him
  - viccis 1y ago
    It's true though. This effect is what keeps companies like PRS in business.
    - bombcar 1y ago
      There’s a whole industry of prosumer stuff in … well, many industries. Power tools definitely have it!
gdubs 1y ago
Atkinson's work is so influential. From his contributions to the Macintosh team, to HyperCard, Bill was an inspiration to me and showed the power of merging art & technology. Thanks for everything, Bill — Rest in Peace.
wesnerm2 1y ago
Atkinson's HyperCard was released in 1987, before the widespread adoption of the web. HyperCard introduced concepts like interactive stacks of cards, scripting, and linking, which were later adopted and expanded upon in the web. Robert Cailliau, who assisted Tim Berners-Lee in developing the first web browser, was influenced by HyperCard's hyperlink concept.
- bicepjai 1y ago
  Please give a modern day metaphor or similar feature for HyperCard
davisr 1y ago
I first met Bill over video-chat during 2020 and we got to know each other a bit. He later sent me a gift that changed my life. We hadn't talked for the past couple years, but I know he experienced "death" before and was as psychologically prepared as anyone could be. I have no doubt that he handled the biggest trip of his life with grace. We didn't always see eye-to-eye when it came to software, but we did share a mutual interest in the unknown, and the meaning of it all. Meet ya on the other side, Bill.
- fingerlocks 1y ago
  Don’t leave us hanging. What was the gift?
  - cess11 1y ago
    Perhaps there were enough clues in the message to figure it out.
    - DonHopkins 1y ago
      Perhaps a colorful postcard with the message: * <= Lick This Spot (You may be one of the Lucky 20!)
      - cess11 1y ago
        Perhaps!
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
happycube 1y ago
CHM posted MacPaint and QuickDraw source: https://computerhistory.org/blog/macpaint-and-quickdraw-source-code/ https://computerhistory.org/blog/macpaint-and-quickdraw-sour...
- cxr 1y ago
  In the corresponding interview, Bill makes several pointed remarks that the state of the code published—or at least he code as it was when presented to him for comment—is not his QuickDraw code. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGIIwyJ7G94 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGIIwyJ7G94>
bilekas 1y ago
I need a facebook account to see this post ? Can we get a better link maybe on the homepage ?
- rmason 1y ago
  Here's a post that quotes the original Facebook post and adds some personal comments. https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/06/07/bill-atkinson-rip https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/06/07/bill-atkinson-r...
  - dang 1y ago
    Thanks! I've changed the link to that from https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10238073579963378&id=1378467145 https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1023807357996337... above (but put the original URL in the top text so people can read both).
thought_alarm 1y ago
Bill Atkinson was a very fascinating guy. His interview with Leo Laporte from 2013 is a great listen. Here's a little 6 minute clip: An acid trip, and the origins of Hypercard. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdJKjBHCh18 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdJKjBHCh18
bigstrat2003 1y ago
For anyone (like me) wondering who this guy was, he was a prominent UI guy at Apple back in the day. According to Wikipedia he created the menu bar, QuickDraw, and HyperCard. For whomever submits stories like this, please say who the person was. Very few people are so famous that everyone in tech knows who they were, and Mr. Atkinson was not one of them. I've heard of his accomplishments, but never the man himself.
- djmips 1y ago
  He was more then a prominent UI guy - back then he was designer and programmer - designing and coding the foundations.
- gdubs 1y ago
  Adding a bit more context: The World Wide Web arguably exists because of HyperCard. The idea that information can be hyperlinked together. Atkinson was a brilliant engineer. As critical to the launch of A Macintosh as anyone — efficient rendering of regions, overlapping windows, etc. And last but not least, Mac Paint. Every computer painting program in existence owes Atkinson a nod.
  - btilly 1y ago
    The idea that information can be hyperlinked together predated HyperCard by decades. It goes back to https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-may-think/303881/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-m..., which was written in 1945. The same essay also has the fundamental ideas for a citation index. This gave rise both to the Science Citation Index and to various hypertext systems. For example the famous 1968 presentation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJDv-zdhzMY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJDv-zdhzMY, now known as "The Mother of All Demos", demonstrated a working hypertext system among the other jaw-dropping accomplishments. HyperCard brought hypertext to commodity hardware. The Web made a distributed hypertext system viable. Google's PageRank recombined hypertext and the Science Citation Index to make the web more usable. And all of the key insights trace back to Vannevar Bush. Who was able to have such deep insights in 1945 because he had been working in, and thinking about, computing at least since 1927. The history of important ideas in computing generally goes far deeper than most programmers are aware.
iwontberude 1y ago
HyperCard was my introduction to programming. It was the first time I used a programming language on my mom’s old Macintosh IIci. It really has been a long time. Thank you, Bill.
bill_mcgonigle 1y ago
People today take the WIMP interface for granted and forget about the pioneers who invented it. It's really sad to see desktop apps adopt hamburger menus and things that make sense on mobile but make life harder on a desktop built for WIMP. Thank you, Bill! Some days I'd rather be using your interface.
winterrx 1y ago
Rest in peace.
empressplay 1y ago
HyperCard Simulator: https://hcsimulator.com https://hcsimulator.com ViperCard HyperCard re-imagining: https://www.vipercard.net/ https://www.vipercard.net/
- sgt 1y ago
  HyperCard also inspired Myst (the game), if I recall correctly
  - Uvix 1y ago
    The initial (Mac-only) version of Myst was built in HyperCard.
    - WillAdams 1y ago
      And it was preceded by _The Manhole_ which was billed as "Where Alice would have gone if she had Hypercard".
pcdoodle 1y ago
Oh man, he's a legend. My condolences to any family members passing by in remembrance. My highest respect goes to those with the tenacity and character required to force a good idea into existence. Bill inspired many people. While reading about him in "Revolution in the Valley", it felt like it recalibrated my own personal compass and gave me a sense of purpose in my own endeavors.
DonHopkins 1y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21779399 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21779399 DonHopkins on Dec 13, 2019 | parent | context | favorite | on: Bill Atkinson: Reflections on the 40th anniversary... I recently posted these thoughts about Bill Atkinson, and links to articles and a recent interview he gave to Brad Myers' user interface class at CMU: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21726302 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21726302 Bill Atkinson is the humblest, sweetest, most astronomically talented guy -- practically the opposite of Rony Abovitz! I think they're on very different drugs. The Psychedelic Inspiration For Hypercard, by Bill Atkinson, as told to Leo Laporte. "In 1985 I swallowed a tiny fleck of gelatin containing a medium dose of LSD, and I spent most of the night sitting on a concrete park bench outside my home in Los Gatos, California." ... https://www.mondo2000.com/2018/06/18/the-inspiration-for-hypercard/ https://www.mondo2000.com/2018/06/18/the-inspiration-for-hyp... Full interview with lots more details about the development of HyperCard: https://twit.tv/shows/triangulation/episodes/247?autostart=false https://twit.tv/shows/triangulation/episodes/247?autostart=f... Bill Atkinson's guest lecture in Brad Meyer's CMU 05-640 Interaction Techniques class, Spring 2019, Feb 4, 2019: https://scs.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=25053106-2187-4cde-9981-a9eb002aa4e8 https://scs.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=... Including polaroids of early Lisa development. About PhotoCard: https://web.archive.org/web/20110303033205/http://www.billatkinson.com/aboutPhotoCard.html https://web.archive.org/web/20110303033205/http://www.billat... PhotoCard by Bill Atkinson is a free app available from the iTunes App store, that allows you to create custom postcards using Bill's nature photos or your own personal photos, then send them by email or postal mail from your iPad, iPhone or iPod touch. Bill Atkinson, Mac software legend and world renowned nature photographer, has created an innovative application that redefines how people create and send postcards. With PhotoCard you can make dazzling, high resolution postcards on your iPad, iPhone or iPod touch, and send them on-the-spot, through email or the US Postal Service. The app is amazingly easy to use. To create a PhotoCard, select one of Bill's nature photos or one of your own personal photos. Then, flip the card over to type your message. For a fun touch, jazz up your PhotoCard with decorative stickers and stamps. If you're emailing your card, it can even include an audible greeting. When you've finished your creation, send it off to any email or postal address in the world! pvg on Dec 13, 2019 | prev [–] Was this bit about LSD and Hypercard covered before what seems like a 2016 interview and some later articles? So much has been written about HyperCard (and MacPaint and QuickDraw) I'm wondering if I somehow managed to miss it in all that material. DonHopkins on Dec 13, 2019 | parent | next [–] As far as I know, the first time Bill Atkinson publically mentioned that LSD inspired HyperCard was in an interview with Leo Laporte on Apr 25th 2016, which claims to be "Part 2". I have searched all over for part 1 but have not been able to find it. Then Mondo 2000 published a transcript of that part of the interview on June 18 2018, and I think a few other publications repeated it around that time. And later on Feb 4, 2019 he gave a live talk to Brad Myers' "05-640: Interaction Techniques" user interface design class at CMU, during which he read the transcript. http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~bam/uicourse/05440inter2019/schedule.html http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~bam/uicourse/05440inter2019/schedule.... It's well worth watching that interview. He went over and explained all of his amazing Polaroids of Lisa development, which I don't think have ever been published anywhere else. See Bill Atkinson's Lisa development polaroids: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~bam/uicourse/05440inter2019/Bill_Atkinson_Photos/ http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~bam/uicourse/05440inter2019/Bill_Atki... Then at 1:03:15 a student asked him the million dollar question: what was the impetus and motivation behind HyperCard? He chuckled, reached for the transcript he had off-camera, and then out of the blue he asked the entire class "How many of you guys have done ... a psychedelic?" (Brad reported "No hands", but I think some may have been embarrassed to admit it in front of their professor). So then Bill launched into reading the transcript of the LSD HyperCard story, and blew all the students' minds. See video of Bill's talk: https://scs.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=25053106-2187-4cde-9981-a9eb002aa4e8 https://scs.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=... The next week I gave a talk to the same class that Bill had just traumatized by asking if they'd done illegal drugs, and (at 37:11) I trolled them by conspiratorially asking: "One thing I wanted to ask the class: Have any of you ever used ... (pregnant pause) ... HyperCard? Basically, because in 1987 I saw HyperCard, and it fucking blew my mind." Then I launched into my description of how important and amazing HyperCard was. See video of Don's talk: https://scs.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=f0600d9d-282e-4b83-a6f4-a9f2003ad407 https://scs.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=... Here is an index of all of the videos from Brad Myers' interaction techniques class, including Rob Haitani (Palm Pilot), Shumin Zhai (text input and swipe method), Dan Bricklin (spreadsheets, Demo prototyping tool), Don Hopkins (pie menus), and Bill Atkinson (Mac, HyperCard): https://scs.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Sessions/List.aspx#folderID=%2250285cc6-431b-4b7e-af35-a9eb00287eec%22 https://scs.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Sessions/List.a...
ayaros 1y ago
A sad day for everyone. R.I.P. <3
carlosdp 1y ago
I was just telling someone about the story of how he invented bitmapping for overlapping windows in the first Mac GUI in like two weeks, largely because he mis-remembered that being already a feature in the Xerox PARC demo and was convinced it was already possible. RIP to a legend
vercantez 1y ago
Wow. One of the absolute greatest. The world truly is a different place because of Bill. Bill’s importance in the history of computing cannot be overstated. Hypercard is probably my favorite invention of his. So ahead of its time. Rest in peace Bill
jonstewart 1y ago
I was just musing to a young team member the other day that I think OOP comes easy to me because I learned HyperCard (v1.2 on System 6 on an SE) at a young age. RIP.
- analog31 1y ago
  This was my experience too. My mom had a subscription to Byte Magazine, and I remember trying to read the articles on OOP when they came out. It was utterly opaque to me. When I started using HyperCard, the light bulb turned on. I think a subtle factor is that when learning HC (or Visual Basic, or LabVIEW), you started using objects before you learned how to create them. All of these packages came with lots of pre-written objects that were easy to use. In the case of VB, you had to buy a special version if you wanted to create your own objects, and very few people did. I think when teaching newer languages like Python, this is done as a matter of course. For instance if you show someone how to calculate a function and graph it, you're probably using objects from something like Matplotlib, before being shown how to create your own. And once again, among casual programmers, relatively few people define their own classes.
  - zahlman 1y ago
    >And once again, among casual programmers, relatively few people define their own classes. I find that I'm less interested in defining my own classes today than I was 10 or so years ago. https://us.pycon.org/2012/schedule/presentation/352/ https://us.pycon.org/2012/schedule/presentation/352/ left a big impression on me (though I didn't see it until a fair bit after the fact).
malwrar 1y ago
This post is a really beautiful farewell, thanks author for including some examples of his work to smile at.
THENATHE 1y ago
I know nothing about the fundamentals of “old computing” like what Mr. Atkinson worked on as I am only 27 and have much more contemporary experience. That being said, I still very greatly mourn the loss of these old head techs because the world of tech I use today would not have been possible if not for these incredibly smart and talented individuals. To learn to code without YouTube is truly a feat I could not imagine, and the world will be a lesser place without this kind of ingenuity. Hopefully he’s making some computers in the sky a bit better!
- deleted 1y ago
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- bombcar 1y ago
  It's amazing to remember that there was an entire generation of computers and users for whom a command line was a new and modern invention!
mistrial9 1y ago
I remember Bill from the halcyon days, surrounded by smoke and mirrors. Amazing individual -- rest in Peace
blindriver 1y ago
Another death from pancreatic cancer. I really hope we can figure out why rates are skyrocketing because it is a silent killer and usually isn’t detected until it’s too late.
- ksec 1y ago
  He is 74. I think Age has more to do with it.
jprd 1y ago
HyperCard opened my mind as a kid in a way that I couldn't grok until the first time I took Mushrooms. What a genius.
- replwoacause 1y ago
  Did that single experience with mushrooms change you forever, or was your insight transient?
djmips 1y ago
I'm a little shook. A hero to many GenX coders I'm sure - I'm one of them. What a legend.
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mjbamford 1y ago
I never met Bill, and he never knew I existed, but he has had such a huge impact on my career, my family and my prosperity. I started my programming passion on the Apple II and switch to the Mac in 1984 after seeing MacPaint. Hypercard was very impactful on my logical thinking, paraded the incredibility of possibilities from this machine, and taught me how to conceptualise information. His humble efforts have had such a profound affect. I'm so very full of grief upon hearing this news.
brentjanderson 1y ago
Bill's contribution with HyperCard is of course legendary. Apart from the experience of classrooms and computer labs in elementary schools, it was also the primary software powering a fusion of bridge-simulator-meets-live-action-drama field trips (among many other things) for over 20 years at the Space Center in central Utah.[0] I was one of many beneficiaries of this program as a participant, volunteer, and staff member. It was among the best things I've ever done. That seed crystal of software shaped hundreds of thousands of students that to this day continue to rave about this program (although the last bits of HyperCard retired permanently about 12 years ago, nowadays it's primarily web based tech). HyperCard's impact on teaching students to program starship simulators, and then telling compelling, interactive, immersive, multi-player dramatic stories in those ships is something enabled by Atkinson's dream in 1985. May your consciousness journey between infinite pools of light, Bill. Also, if you've read this far, go donate to Pancreatic Cancer research.[1] [0]: https://spacecenter.alpineschools.org https://spacecenter.alpineschools.org [1]: https://pancan.org https://pancan.org
- betamaxthetape 1y ago
  Is that stack available anywhere? Or do you have a copy?
  - brentjanderson 1y ago
    Sadly, most of them are lost to time. There's one that I'm aware of at https://archive.org/details/hypercard_voyager-engineer-new https://archive.org/details/hypercard_voyager-engineer-new is just one station of about 15 from one of the ships. https://thoriumsim.com https://thoriumsim.com is a modern incarnation of the same software.
yardie 1y ago
The Mac, Hypercard, MacPaint, and General Magic he's one of the few engineers who's such a substantial impact on my life. Rest in Peace.
bhk 1y ago
There were giants in the Earth in those days...
bhouston 1y ago
Why are so many original Apple people dying of pancreatic cancer? Is it that common and this a coincidence?
koops 1y ago
Bill Atkinson and Andy Hertzfeld were my childhood heroes through their work. Inside Macintosh was a series that enlightened my teen years. Thanks, Bill.
solarized 1y ago
Inna lillahi wa inna ilaihi rojiun.
lutusp 1y ago
My time with Atkinson came before the Macintosh, before Hypercard. As a company Apple was struggling and we were preparing for what, in retrospect, was the really terrible Apple III. It was a less optimistic time -- after the Apple II and before the Macintosh. A digression: the roster of Apple-related pancreatic cancer victims is getting longer -- Jef Raskin (2005), Steve Jobs (2011), now Bill Atkinson (2025). The overall pancreatic cancer occurrence rate is 14 per 100,000, so such a cluster is surprising within a small group, but the scientist in me wants to argue that it's just a coincidence, signifying nothing. Maybe it's the stress of seeing how quickly one's projects become historical footnotes, erased by later events. And maybe it's irrational to expect anything else.
- tw1984 1y ago
  Steve Jobs had pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor, which is not the traditional form of the pancreatic cancer people usually talk about. It is far less aggressive and completely treatable, in fact almost 100% curable as Jobs had it diagnosed at such an early stage.
- ip26 1y ago
  If there was a link, I would be thinking about all the superfund sites in Silicon Valley, pondering the manufacture of the Apple II, demographic clustering, or whether there was an unusually strong smoking culture at young Apple Computer, rather than some unique mental stress of the job.
erksa 1y ago
Not just a huge influence w/ Apple. Bill Atkinson was a dedicated photographer who did a lot to help bring the idea of sharing memories together. He and his associated printed and sent tons of photography all around the world. The was loved among photographers as well. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/photocard-by-bill-atkinson/id333208430 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/photocard-by-bill-atkinson/id3...
- pmoriarty 1y ago
  More of his photos can be found at https://billatkinson.com/ https://billatkinson.com/
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beagle3 1y ago
Thanks, Bill. Rest in Peace. I was amazed by Bill's software seeing it on a Mac back then - MacPaint mostly, then HyperCard. I was not even 10, but I was already programming, and spent hours trying to figure out how to implement MacPaint's Lasso on my humble ZX Spectrum. (With some success, but not quite as elegant...) If you want to experience HyperCard, John Earnest (RodgerTheGreat on HN[0]) built Decker[1] that runs on both the web and natively, and captures the aesthetic and most stuff perfectly. It uses Lil as a programming language - it is different than HyperTalk, but beautiful in its own right. (It doesn't read as English quite the way HyperTalk does, but it is more regular and easier to write - it's a readable/writable vector language, quite unlike those other ones ...) [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=RodgerTheGreat https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=RodgerTheGreat [1] https://beyondloom.com/decker/ https://beyondloom.com/decker/
CodeWriter23 1y ago
FatBits was life altering for me.
jnaina 1y ago
A sad for me. I spent countless hours building HyperCard stacks and creating artwork in MacPaint, in college. A true legend. RIP. Fat Bits forever.
yreg 1y ago
"How many man-years did it take to write QuickDraw?", the Byte magazine reporter asked Steve. Steve turned to look at Bill. "Bill, how long did you spend writing Quickdraw?" "Well, I worked on it on and off for four years", Bill replied. Steve paused for a beat and then turned back to the Byte reporter. "Twenty-four man-years. We invested twenty-four man-years in QuickDraw." Obviously, Steve figured that one Atkinson year equaled six man years, which may have been a modest estimate. http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Mythical_Man_Year.txt http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Mythical_Man_Year.txt
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Claudette81 1y ago
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tdhz77 1y ago
I asked Bill if he thought I could become an engineer even after earning my degree in sociology and political science. I really enjoyed writing software at the time but had no formal training. He laughed as he did and said of course, and you will be better than most. He found it as a strength and not a weakness. I will miss him.
- vovavili 1y ago
  These degrees tend to prepare you quite well for programming, since at top-tier universities they are quite heavy on use of R and statistical modelling.
  - pjmorris 1y ago
    I'm willing to be a cup of coffee that the OP's degree and Atkinson's advice preceded the existence of R. I'm going to excerpt a mid-80's interview of Butler Lampson from Susan Lammer's book 'Programmers At Work' to illustrate my guess at what Atkinson might've been thinking... LAMPSON: I used to think that undergraduate computer-science education was bad, and that it should be outlawed. Recently I realized that position isn’t reasonable. An undergraduate degree in computer science is a perfectly respectable professional degree, just like electrical engineering or business administration. But I do think it’s a serious mistake to take an undergraduate degree in computer science if you intend to study it in graduate school. INTERVIEWER: Why? LAMPSON: Because most of what you learn won’t have any long-term significance. You won’t learn new ways of using your mind, which does you more good than learning the details of how to write a compiler, which is what you’re likely to get from undergraduate computer science. I think the world would be much better off if all the graduate computer-science departments would get together and agree not to accept anybody with a bachelor’s degree in computer science. Those people should be required to take a remedial year to learn something respectable like mathematics or history, before going on to graduate-level computer science. However, I don’t see that happening.
leakycap 1y ago
I truly believe Mr. Atkinson's dedication to his craft was part of the reason I and so many others loved the Mac and got into computers I will continue to admire him and his way of problem solving, speaking about your past work -- successes and lessons learned
kabdib 1y ago
the source code of quickdraw is art
mathattack 1y ago
"What a man, what a mind, what gifts to the world he left us." What a tribute! He was famous at the time, though now perhaps an unsung hero in leading us into a GUI world.
brador 1y ago
Pancreatic cancer. That’s what got Steve too.

1589 points by romanhn 1y ago

https://facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10238073579963378&id=1378467145 https://facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10238073579963378&...

jmwilson 1y ago

HyperCard was my introduction to programming and delivered on the vision of personal computing as "bicycle for the mind." RIP

animanoir 1y ago

[dead]

agumonkey 1y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atkinson_dithering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atkinson_dithering and so many other things rip

msie 1y ago

RIP programming god.

WillAdams 1y ago

Some notable stories from Folklore.org: https://www.folklore.org/Joining_Apple_Computer.html https://www.folklore.org/Joining_Apple_Computer.html https://www.folklore.org/Negative_2000_Lines_Of_Code.html https://www.folklore.org/Negative_2000_Lines_Of_Code.html --- something to bring up whenever lines of code as a metric is put forward https://www.folklore.org/Rosings_Rascals.html https://www.folklore.org/Rosings_Rascals.html --- story of how the Macintosh Finder came to be https://www.folklore.org/I_Still_Remember_Regions.html https://www.folklore.org/I_Still_Remember_Regions.html --- surviving a car accident

LorenDB 1y ago
The lines of code story is a timeless classic.
- 90s_dev 1y ago
  > He thought and wrote "-2000 lines". Management stopped asking Bill to fill out the form. This lesson stuck with me for years. Final results alone are measurable, not productivity.
  - worik 1y ago
    Imagine being the manager that had to assess Bill Atkinson's productivity! > Final results alone are measurable Not even those, for individuals Mostly we work in teams. I myself like to work in "plumbing" that is arbitrarily far from "final results"
- garciasn 1y ago
  Score code on line count and runtime golf. Shorter, faster, and fastest time to completion is best. Code that’s 4K and took slightly less time to write but runs slightly faster than code that’s 400 bytes that took another 30m to write still doesn’t get the best score.
  - dan-robertson 1y ago
    I kind think metrics are not the answer and instead one needs taste. Obviously performance is multidimensional both in what one measures (latency vs throughput) and as a function of the input. The solution you imagine that is slightly faster in the test could avoid (or introduce) different worst-case or asymptotic behaviour, for example.
    - garciasn 1y ago
      I argue we shouldn’t be doing this at all; but, if we have to do to whatever insanely arbitrary metric a project/product/eng leader wants, this is probably a better metric than code length.
  - pmoriarty 1y ago
    > Shorter, faster, and fastest time to completion is best. What about correctness, robustness, readability, clarity, maintainability?
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leoc 1y ago
“Busy Being Born” https://www.folklore.org/Busy_Being_Born.html https://www.folklore.org/Busy_Being_Born.html , with its priceless early glimpses of the Lisa/Mac UI preserved in Polaroid photos, may be the best.
- bombcar 1y ago
  This shows amazing foresight on Bill's part. It would have been easy for all that to be lost.
- pmoriarty 1y ago
  Here is a video of Bill showing and discussing those Polaroids: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Qg0mHFcB510 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Qg0mHFcB510

fotta 1y ago

Wow. Rest in peace Bill. I think he is deserving of a black stripe up top.

djmips 1y ago
100%
zahlman 1y ago
You can set your 'topcolor' in preferences, but this will obscure the links in the sidebar (barring local CSS hacking).
- froggertoaster 1y ago
  I think you missed the point.
  - zahlman 1y ago
    What other stripe would there be to refer to? I haven't seen anything like that here.
    - Centigonal 1y ago
      Check the site now. HN has a "flag at half-mast" feature for when tech visionaries are freed by the great GC of the cosmos.
      - zahlman 1y ago
        Ah, I had to change topcolor back to notice....

soulofmischief 1y ago

Atkinson is a legendary UX pioneer. Great technical skill and a deep understanding of the principles of interaction. His work, from the double click to HyperCard, continues to inspire my own work. You will be missed.

pcunite 1y ago

"Some say Steve used me, but I say he harnessed and motivated me, and drew out my best creative energy." - Bill Atkinson

asveikau 1y ago

Some of his old demos of graphics capabilities on the Mac or hypercard are around on YouTube, and I watched some maybe 10 years ago. He displayed not just the tech chops but he was a good communicator. RIP.

matthewn 1y ago

In an alternate timeline, HyperCard was not allowed to wither and die, but instead continued to mature, embraced the web, and inspired an entire genre of software-creating software. In this timeline, people shape their computing experiences as easily as one might sculpt a piece of clay, creating personal apps that make perfect sense to them and fit like a glove; computing devices actually become (for everyone, not just programmers) the "bicycle for the mind" that Steve Jobs spoke of. I think this is the timeline that Atkinson envisioned, and I wish I lived in it. We've lost a true visionary. Memory eternal!

asveikau 1y ago
Maybe there's some sense of longing for a tool that's similar today, but there's no way of knowing how much hypercard did have the impact you are talking about. For example many of us reading here experienced HyperCard. It planted seeds in our future endeavors. I remember in elementary school, I had some computer lab classes where the whole class worked in hypercard on some task. Multiply that by however many classrooms did something like that in the 80s and 90s. That's a lot of brains that can be influenced and have been. We can judge it as a success in its own right, even if it never entered the next paradigm or never had quite an equivalent later on.
- cortesoft 1y ago
  HyperCard was the foundation of my programming career. I treated the HyperCard Bible like an actual Bible.
  - leakycap 1y ago
    I miss the days of For Dummies, Bibles, and all the rest. If you'd read that thing carefully a few times, you usually knew your stuff. There was a finish line. Modern continual versioning and constant updates means there is no finish line. No Bible could ever be printed. Ah, nostalgia.
    - mark-r 1y ago

rcarmo 1y ago

Oh. I came here to pass the time as I built a TinyMac with a Pi and was compiling BasiliskII in SDL mode. I'm quite saddened by the news, as Bill was one of the people who had the most influence in the technical design of early Macs (and a brilliant engineer for all accounts). Why isn't the black bar up atop the site?

_mlbt 1y ago
He’s definitely deserving of the black bar. This post is only an hour old as I’m writing this, so give it time. It’s a weekend, and as far as I’m aware there are only 2 mods, unless there are others empowered to turn on the black bar in their absence.

dakiol 1y ago

RIP. It still suprises me that people with resources die so early (he died at 74).

deadbabe 1y ago
Resources only help you reach your genetic potential, but if you’re just not built for longevity you still may not live long. And some people with no resources, no reason to live, but have incredible genetics will linger for many years beyond what people think is possible, like a weed.
- jamessinghal 1y ago
  People without resources or purpose are a weed?
  - accrual 1y ago
    Like a weed, in the sense of living in spite of ones circumstances. For example, a person with limited resources living for a long time, which is like a weed with little sunlight still growing from a crack in concrete.
    - deadbabe 1y ago
      In contrast to some house plants that are meticulously watered and cared for in perfect conditions, and yet they still die in a week.
andoando 1y ago
I wouldnt consider 74 early.
- saalweachter 1y ago
  It's not "he was so young", but it's still a few years shy of "he had a good, long life" IMO.
- 1y ago

dkislyuk 1y ago

From Walter Isaacson's _Steve Jobs_: > One of Bill Atkinson’s amazing feats (which we are so accustomed to nowadays that we rarely marvel at it) was to allow the windows on a screen to overlap so that the “top” one clipped into the ones “below” it. Atkinson made it possible to move these windows around, just like shuffling papers on a desk, with those below becoming visible or hidden as you moved the top ones. Of course, on a computer screen there are no layers of pixels underneath the pixels that you see, so there are no windows actually lurking underneath the ones that appear to be on top. To create the illusion of overlapping windows requires complex coding that involves what are called “regions.” Atkinson pushed himself to make this trick work because he thought he had seen this capability during his visit to Xerox PARC. In fact the folks at PARC had never accomplished it, and they later told him they were amazed that he had done so. “I got a feeling for the empowering aspect of naïveté”, Atkinson said. “Because I didn’t know it couldn’t be done, I was enabled to do it.” He was working so hard that one morning, in a daze, he drove his Corvette into a parked truck and nearly killed himself. Jobs immediately drove to the hospital to see him. “We were pretty worried about you”, he said when Atkinson regained consciousness. Atkinson gave him a pained smile and replied, “Don’t worry, I still remember regions.”

rjsw 1y ago
I think the difference between the Apple and Xerox approach may be more complicated than the people at PARC not knowing how to do this. The Alto doesn't have a framebuffer, each window has its own buffer and the microcode walks the windows to work out what to put on each scanline.
- JKCalhoun 1y ago
  Not doubting that, but what is the substantive difference here? Does the fact that there is a screen buffer on the Mac facilitate clipping that is otherwise not possible on the Alto?
  - lambdaone 1y ago
    It allows the Mac to use far less RAM to display overlapping windows, and doesn't require any extra hardware. Individual regions are refreshed independently of the rest of the screen, with occlusion, updates, and clipping managed automatically,

scrlk 1y ago

Bill Atkinson demoing MacPaint at the Macintosh introduction in 1984: https://youtu.be/1tQ5XwvjPmA?t=1781 https://youtu.be/1tQ5XwvjPmA?t=1781

JKCalhoun 1y ago
Plenty of interviews will Bill on YouTube. Example: https://youtu.be/dhlKTRU--VA https://youtu.be/dhlKTRU--VA Also, perhaps the General Magic documentary is a fun watch too: https://youtu.be/JQymn5flcek https://youtu.be/JQymn5flcek

gavmor 1y ago

If you haven't, check out the documentary[0] on General Magic which Bill co-founded in 1990. Among the more remarkable scenes in there is when a member of the public seems perplexed by the thought that they would even want to "check email from Times Square." An unthinkable future, but they thought it. And yet, most folks have never heard of General Magic. 0. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQymn5flcek https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQymn5flcek

dboreham 1y ago
Invaluable film if you believe Apple invented the smart phone.
- gavmor 1y ago
  Invaluable film if you believe invention is what made Apple valuable.
JKCalhoun 1y ago
Atkinson at this timestamp: https://youtu.be/JQymn5flcek?si=2TMJ8b9zsR_Kitj-&t=1297 https://youtu.be/JQymn5flcek?si=2TMJ8b9zsR_Kitj-&t=1297 Also, it's here in the documentary that someone expresses the excitement anticipating the smart phone. It's hard to watch for me now and not shake my head, "Oh, it's not quite as wonderful as you imagined."

iainmerrick 1y ago

One of my favourite Atkinson stories -- I can't remember if this is on folklore.org or somewhere else -- is that he actually implemented editable text in MacPaint, by scanning the bitmap for character shapes, but chose not to ship that feature because it could never be perfect. Amazing technical skill and great taste and judgement.

duskwuff 1y ago
Here's the story - https://folklore.org/MacPaint_Evolution.html https://folklore.org/MacPaint_Evolution.html

mitchbob 1y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Atkinson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Atkinson Bill on Steve Jobs and HyperCard: https://youtu.be/kzKCZN3UsRQ?si=eNIsysWdrjp2tHwd https://youtu.be/kzKCZN3UsRQ?si=eNIsysWdrjp2tHwd Black bar, please.

cm2187 1y ago
worth watching the full show, was very interesting

mindslight 1y ago

[flagged]

frou_dh 1y ago
Are you doing a Comic-Book-Guy impersonation?
- mindslight 1y ago
  No, just someone who isn't steeped in surveillance culture. My obtuseness is just a direct response to the obtuseness of the surveillance industry demanding "consent" when I'm trying to read about someone's death. I have also entered throwaway nyms for the online streams of family funerals that have tried to bundle abusive legal terms. What's socially gauche here is letting a moment of mourning turn into leverage for the surveillance industry.
kalleboo 1y ago
https://archive.md/W7iOf https://archive.md/W7iOf
- mindslight 1y ago
  Thank you for that, actually. Archive.md is my go to for trashwalled news articles, somehow I didn't think to do that for a Faceboot URL. Probably because I don't respect Faceboot enough to imagine they operate with real URIs.

LightBug1 1y ago

Wow ... made my first app on Hypercard in high school ... Loved it. RIP Mr Bill Atkinson

edbaskerville 1y ago

I wish I could have met him before he died. I'm yet another child of HyperCard. It opened my mind to what computers could be for, and even though the last two decades have been full primarily of disappointment, I still hold onto that other path as a possibility, or even as a slice of reality---a few weeds growing in the cracks of our dystopian concrete.

TruffleLabs 1y ago

I loved his PhotoCard app as it allowed for image customization of the stamp and ability to be printed on very high quality card stock and ink.

dondakirme 1y ago

RIP

baumgarn 1y ago

I fondly remember creating simple narrative stories and games with HyperCard at 6 years old on my dad's Macintosh SE. It was my first contact with programming and a fundamental seed to using the computer as a creative tool. It has shaped my life in a substantial way. RIP Bill - HN bar should be blacked out.

kapitanjakc 1y ago

I've read stories about him on folklore. He was a good man and great engineer. RIP

JKCalhoun 1y ago

When I was on the ColorSync team at Apple we, the engineers, got an invite to his place-in-the-woods one day. I knew who he was at the time, but for some reason I felt I was more or less beholden to conversing only about color-related issues and how they applied to a computer workflow. Having retired, I have been kicking myself for some time not just chatting with him about ... whatever. He was at the time I met him very in to a kind of digital photography. My recollection was that he had a high-end drum scanner and was in fact scanning film negatives (medium format camera?) and then going with a digital workflow from that point on. I remember he was excited about the way that "darks" could be captured (with the scanner?). A straight analog workflow would, according to him, cause the darks to roll off (guessing the film was not the culprit then, perhaps the analog printing process). He excitedly showed us on his computer photos he took along the Pacific ocean of large rock outcroppings against the ocean — pointing out the detail that you could see in the shadow of the rocks. He was putting together a coffee table book of his photos at the time. I have to say that I mused at the time about a wealthy, retired, engineer who throws money at high end photo gear and suddenly thinks they're a photographer. I think I was weighing his "technical" approach to photography vs. a strictly artistic one. Although, having learned more about Ansel Adams technical chops, perhaps for the best photographers there is overlap.

gxs 1y ago
> I have to say that I mused at the time about a wealthy, retired, engineer who throws money at high end photo gear and suddenly thinks they're a photographer I think this says more about you than it does about him
- viccis 1y ago
  It's true though. This effect is what keeps companies like PRS in business.
  - bombcar 1y ago
    There’s a whole industry of prosumer stuff in … well, many industries. Power tools definitely have it!

gdubs 1y ago

Atkinson's work is so influential. From his contributions to the Macintosh team, to HyperCard, Bill was an inspiration to me and showed the power of merging art & technology. Thanks for everything, Bill — Rest in Peace.

wesnerm2 1y ago

Atkinson's HyperCard was released in 1987, before the widespread adoption of the web. HyperCard introduced concepts like interactive stacks of cards, scripting, and linking, which were later adopted and expanded upon in the web. Robert Cailliau, who assisted Tim Berners-Lee in developing the first web browser, was influenced by HyperCard's hyperlink concept.

bicepjai 1y ago
Please give a modern day metaphor or similar feature for HyperCard

davisr 1y ago

I first met Bill over video-chat during 2020 and we got to know each other a bit. He later sent me a gift that changed my life. We hadn't talked for the past couple years, but I know he experienced "death" before and was as psychologically prepared as anyone could be. I have no doubt that he handled the biggest trip of his life with grace. We didn't always see eye-to-eye when it came to software, but we did share a mutual interest in the unknown, and the meaning of it all. Meet ya on the other side, Bill.

fingerlocks 1y ago
Don’t leave us hanging. What was the gift?
- cess11 1y ago
  Perhaps there were enough clues in the message to figure it out.
  - DonHopkins 1y ago
    Perhaps a colorful postcard with the message: * <= Lick This Spot (You may be one of the Lucky 20!)
    - cess11 1y ago
      Perhaps!
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]

happycube 1y ago

CHM posted MacPaint and QuickDraw source: https://computerhistory.org/blog/macpaint-and-quickdraw-source-code/ https://computerhistory.org/blog/macpaint-and-quickdraw-sour...

cxr 1y ago
In the corresponding interview, Bill makes several pointed remarks that the state of the code published—or at least he code as it was when presented to him for comment—is not his QuickDraw code. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGIIwyJ7G94 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGIIwyJ7G94>

bilekas 1y ago

I need a facebook account to see this post ? Can we get a better link maybe on the homepage ?

rmason 1y ago
Here's a post that quotes the original Facebook post and adds some personal comments. https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/06/07/bill-atkinson-rip https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/06/07/bill-atkinson-r...
- dang 1y ago
  Thanks! I've changed the link to that from https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10238073579963378&id=1378467145 https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1023807357996337... above (but put the original URL in the top text so people can read both).

thought_alarm 1y ago

Bill Atkinson was a very fascinating guy. His interview with Leo Laporte from 2013 is a great listen. Here's a little 6 minute clip: An acid trip, and the origins of Hypercard. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdJKjBHCh18 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdJKjBHCh18

bigstrat2003 1y ago

For anyone (like me) wondering who this guy was, he was a prominent UI guy at Apple back in the day. According to Wikipedia he created the menu bar, QuickDraw, and HyperCard. For whomever submits stories like this, please say who the person was. Very few people are so famous that everyone in tech knows who they were, and Mr. Atkinson was not one of them. I've heard of his accomplishments, but never the man himself.

djmips 1y ago
He was more then a prominent UI guy - back then he was designer and programmer - designing and coding the foundations.
gdubs 1y ago
Adding a bit more context: The World Wide Web arguably exists because of HyperCard. The idea that information can be hyperlinked together. Atkinson was a brilliant engineer. As critical to the launch of A Macintosh as anyone — efficient rendering of regions, overlapping windows, etc. And last but not least, Mac Paint. Every computer painting program in existence owes Atkinson a nod.
- btilly 1y ago
  The idea that information can be hyperlinked together predated HyperCard by decades. It goes back to https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-may-think/303881/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-m..., which was written in 1945. The same essay also has the fundamental ideas for a citation index. This gave rise both to the Science Citation Index and to various hypertext systems. For example the famous 1968 presentation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJDv-zdhzMY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJDv-zdhzMY, now known as "The Mother of All Demos", demonstrated a working hypertext system among the other jaw-dropping accomplishments. HyperCard brought hypertext to commodity hardware. The Web made a distributed hypertext system viable. Google's PageRank recombined hypertext and the Science Citation Index to make the web more usable. And all of the key insights trace back to Vannevar Bush. Who was able to have such deep insights in 1945 because he had been working in, and thinking about, computing at least since 1927. The history of important ideas in computing generally goes far deeper than most programmers are aware.

iwontberude 1y ago

HyperCard was my introduction to programming. It was the first time I used a programming language on my mom’s old Macintosh IIci. It really has been a long time. Thank you, Bill.

bill_mcgonigle 1y ago

People today take the WIMP interface for granted and forget about the pioneers who invented it. It's really sad to see desktop apps adopt hamburger menus and things that make sense on mobile but make life harder on a desktop built for WIMP. Thank you, Bill! Some days I'd rather be using your interface.

winterrx 1y ago

Rest in peace.

empressplay 1y ago

HyperCard Simulator: https://hcsimulator.com https://hcsimulator.com ViperCard HyperCard re-imagining: https://www.vipercard.net/ https://www.vipercard.net/

sgt 1y ago
HyperCard also inspired Myst (the game), if I recall correctly
- Uvix 1y ago
  The initial (Mac-only) version of Myst was built in HyperCard.
  - WillAdams 1y ago
    And it was preceded by _The Manhole_ which was billed as "Where Alice would have gone if she had Hypercard".

pcdoodle 1y ago

Oh man, he's a legend. My condolences to any family members passing by in remembrance. My highest respect goes to those with the tenacity and character required to force a good idea into existence. Bill inspired many people. While reading about him in "Revolution in the Valley", it felt like it recalibrated my own personal compass and gave me a sense of purpose in my own endeavors.

DonHopkins 1y ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21779399 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21779399 DonHopkins on Dec 13, 2019 | parent | context | favorite | on: Bill Atkinson: Reflections on the 40th anniversary... I recently posted these thoughts about Bill Atkinson, and links to articles and a recent interview he gave to Brad Myers' user interface class at CMU: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21726302 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21726302 Bill Atkinson is the humblest, sweetest, most astronomically talented guy -- practically the opposite of Rony Abovitz! I think they're on very different drugs. The Psychedelic Inspiration For Hypercard, by Bill Atkinson, as told to Leo Laporte. "In 1985 I swallowed a tiny fleck of gelatin containing a medium dose of LSD, and I spent most of the night sitting on a concrete park bench outside my home in Los Gatos, California." ... https://www.mondo2000.com/2018/06/18/the-inspiration-for-hypercard/ https://www.mondo2000.com/2018/06/18/the-inspiration-for-hyp... Full interview with lots more details about the development of HyperCard: https://twit.tv/shows/triangulation/episodes/247?autostart=false https://twit.tv/shows/triangulation/episodes/247?autostart=f... Bill Atkinson's guest lecture in Brad Meyer's CMU 05-640 Interaction Techniques class, Spring 2019, Feb 4, 2019: https://scs.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=25053106-2187-4cde-9981-a9eb002aa4e8 https://scs.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=... Including polaroids of early Lisa development. About PhotoCard: https://web.archive.org/web/20110303033205/http://www.billatkinson.com/aboutPhotoCard.html https://web.archive.org/web/20110303033205/http://www.billat... PhotoCard by Bill Atkinson is a free app available from the iTunes App store, that allows you to create custom postcards using Bill's nature photos or your own personal photos, then send them by email or postal mail from your iPad, iPhone or iPod touch. Bill Atkinson, Mac software legend and world renowned nature photographer, has created an innovative application that redefines how people create and send postcards. With PhotoCard you can make dazzling, high resolution postcards on your iPad, iPhone or iPod touch, and send them on-the-spot, through email or the US Postal Service. The app is amazingly easy to use. To create a PhotoCard, select one of Bill's nature photos or one of your own personal photos. Then, flip the card over to type your message. For a fun touch, jazz up your PhotoCard with decorative stickers and stamps. If you're emailing your card, it can even include an audible greeting. When you've finished your creation, send it off to any email or postal address in the world! pvg on Dec 13, 2019 | prev [–] Was this bit about LSD and Hypercard covered before what seems like a 2016 interview and some later articles? So much has been written about HyperCard (and MacPaint and QuickDraw) I'm wondering if I somehow managed to miss it in all that material. DonHopkins on Dec 13, 2019 | parent | next [–] As far as I know, the first time Bill Atkinson publically mentioned that LSD inspired HyperCard was in an interview with Leo Laporte on Apr 25th 2016, which claims to be "Part 2". I have searched all over for part 1 but have not been able to find it. Then Mondo 2000 published a transcript of that part of the interview on June 18 2018, and I think a few other publications repeated it around that time. And later on Feb 4, 2019 he gave a live talk to Brad Myers' "05-640: Interaction Techniques" user interface design class at CMU, during which he read the transcript. http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~bam/uicourse/05440inter2019/schedule.html http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~bam/uicourse/05440inter2019/schedule.... It's well worth watching that interview. He went over and explained all of his amazing Polaroids of Lisa development, which I don't think have ever been published anywhere else. See Bill Atkinson's Lisa development polaroids: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~bam/uicourse/05440inter2019/Bill_Atkinson_Photos/ http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~bam/uicourse/05440inter2019/Bill_Atki... Then at 1:03:15 a student asked him the million dollar question: what was the impetus and motivation behind HyperCard? He chuckled, reached for the transcript he had off-camera, and then out of the blue he asked the entire class "How many of you guys have done ... a psychedelic?" (Brad reported "No hands", but I think some may have been embarrassed to admit it in front of their professor). So then Bill launched into reading the transcript of the LSD HyperCard story, and blew all the students' minds. See video of Bill's talk: https://scs.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=25053106-2187-4cde-9981-a9eb002aa4e8 https://scs.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=... The next week I gave a talk to the same class that Bill had just traumatized by asking if they'd done illegal drugs, and (at 37:11) I trolled them by conspiratorially asking: "One thing I wanted to ask the class: Have any of you ever used ... (pregnant pause) ... HyperCard? Basically, because in 1987 I saw HyperCard, and it fucking blew my mind." Then I launched into my description of how important and amazing HyperCard was. See video of Don's talk: https://scs.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=f0600d9d-282e-4b83-a6f4-a9f2003ad407 https://scs.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=... Here is an index of all of the videos from Brad Myers' interaction techniques class, including Rob Haitani (Palm Pilot), Shumin Zhai (text input and swipe method), Dan Bricklin (spreadsheets, Demo prototyping tool), Don Hopkins (pie menus), and Bill Atkinson (Mac, HyperCard): https://scs.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Sessions/List.aspx#folderID=%2250285cc6-431b-4b7e-af35-a9eb00287eec%22 https://scs.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Sessions/List.a...

ayaros 1y ago

A sad day for everyone. R.I.P. <3

carlosdp 1y ago

I was just telling someone about the story of how he invented bitmapping for overlapping windows in the first Mac GUI in like two weeks, largely because he mis-remembered that being already a feature in the Xerox PARC demo and was convinced it was already possible. RIP to a legend

vercantez 1y ago

Wow. One of the absolute greatest. The world truly is a different place because of Bill. Bill’s importance in the history of computing cannot be overstated. Hypercard is probably my favorite invention of his. So ahead of its time. Rest in peace Bill

jonstewart 1y ago

I was just musing to a young team member the other day that I think OOP comes easy to me because I learned HyperCard (v1.2 on System 6 on an SE) at a young age. RIP.

analog31 1y ago
This was my experience too. My mom had a subscription to Byte Magazine, and I remember trying to read the articles on OOP when they came out. It was utterly opaque to me. When I started using HyperCard, the light bulb turned on. I think a subtle factor is that when learning HC (or Visual Basic, or LabVIEW), you started using objects before you learned how to create them. All of these packages came with lots of pre-written objects that were easy to use. In the case of VB, you had to buy a special version if you wanted to create your own objects, and very few people did. I think when teaching newer languages like Python, this is done as a matter of course. For instance if you show someone how to calculate a function and graph it, you're probably using objects from something like Matplotlib, before being shown how to create your own. And once again, among casual programmers, relatively few people define their own classes.
- zahlman 1y ago
  >And once again, among casual programmers, relatively few people define their own classes. I find that I'm less interested in defining my own classes today than I was 10 or so years ago. https://us.pycon.org/2012/schedule/presentation/352/ https://us.pycon.org/2012/schedule/presentation/352/ left a big impression on me (though I didn't see it until a fair bit after the fact).

malwrar 1y ago

This post is a really beautiful farewell, thanks author for including some examples of his work to smile at.

THENATHE 1y ago

I know nothing about the fundamentals of “old computing” like what Mr. Atkinson worked on as I am only 27 and have much more contemporary experience. That being said, I still very greatly mourn the loss of these old head techs because the world of tech I use today would not have been possible if not for these incredibly smart and talented individuals. To learn to code without YouTube is truly a feat I could not imagine, and the world will be a lesser place without this kind of ingenuity. Hopefully he’s making some computers in the sky a bit better!

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bombcar 1y ago
It's amazing to remember that there was an entire generation of computers and users for whom a command line was a new and modern invention!

mistrial9 1y ago

I remember Bill from the halcyon days, surrounded by smoke and mirrors. Amazing individual -- rest in Peace

blindriver 1y ago

Another death from pancreatic cancer. I really hope we can figure out why rates are skyrocketing because it is a silent killer and usually isn’t detected until it’s too late.

ksec 1y ago
He is 74. I think Age has more to do with it.

jprd 1y ago

HyperCard opened my mind as a kid in a way that I couldn't grok until the first time I took Mushrooms. What a genius.

replwoacause 1y ago
Did that single experience with mushrooms change you forever, or was your insight transient?

djmips 1y ago

I'm a little shook. A hero to many GenX coders I'm sure - I'm one of them. What a legend.

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mjbamford 1y ago

I never met Bill, and he never knew I existed, but he has had such a huge impact on my career, my family and my prosperity. I started my programming passion on the Apple II and switch to the Mac in 1984 after seeing MacPaint. Hypercard was very impactful on my logical thinking, paraded the incredibility of possibilities from this machine, and taught me how to conceptualise information. His humble efforts have had such a profound affect. I'm so very full of grief upon hearing this news.

brentjanderson 1y ago

Bill's contribution with HyperCard is of course legendary. Apart from the experience of classrooms and computer labs in elementary schools, it was also the primary software powering a fusion of bridge-simulator-meets-live-action-drama field trips (among many other things) for over 20 years at the Space Center in central Utah.[0] I was one of many beneficiaries of this program as a participant, volunteer, and staff member. It was among the best things I've ever done. That seed crystal of software shaped hundreds of thousands of students that to this day continue to rave about this program (although the last bits of HyperCard retired permanently about 12 years ago, nowadays it's primarily web based tech). HyperCard's impact on teaching students to program starship simulators, and then telling compelling, interactive, immersive, multi-player dramatic stories in those ships is something enabled by Atkinson's dream in 1985. May your consciousness journey between infinite pools of light, Bill. Also, if you've read this far, go donate to Pancreatic Cancer research.[1] [0]: https://spacecenter.alpineschools.org https://spacecenter.alpineschools.org [1]: https://pancan.org https://pancan.org

betamaxthetape 1y ago
Is that stack available anywhere? Or do you have a copy?
- brentjanderson 1y ago
  Sadly, most of them are lost to time. There's one that I'm aware of at https://archive.org/details/hypercard_voyager-engineer-new https://archive.org/details/hypercard_voyager-engineer-new is just one station of about 15 from one of the ships. https://thoriumsim.com https://thoriumsim.com is a modern incarnation of the same software.

yardie 1y ago

The Mac, Hypercard, MacPaint, and General Magic he's one of the few engineers who's such a substantial impact on my life. Rest in Peace.

bhk 1y ago

There were giants in the Earth in those days...

bhouston 1y ago

Why are so many original Apple people dying of pancreatic cancer? Is it that common and this a coincidence?

koops 1y ago

Bill Atkinson and Andy Hertzfeld were my childhood heroes through their work. Inside Macintosh was a series that enlightened my teen years. Thanks, Bill.

solarized 1y ago

Inna lillahi wa inna ilaihi rojiun.

lutusp 1y ago

My time with Atkinson came before the Macintosh, before Hypercard. As a company Apple was struggling and we were preparing for what, in retrospect, was the really terrible Apple III. It was a less optimistic time -- after the Apple II and before the Macintosh. A digression: the roster of Apple-related pancreatic cancer victims is getting longer -- Jef Raskin (2005), Steve Jobs (2011), now Bill Atkinson (2025). The overall pancreatic cancer occurrence rate is 14 per 100,000, so such a cluster is surprising within a small group, but the scientist in me wants to argue that it's just a coincidence, signifying nothing. Maybe it's the stress of seeing how quickly one's projects become historical footnotes, erased by later events. And maybe it's irrational to expect anything else.

tw1984 1y ago
Steve Jobs had pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor, which is not the traditional form of the pancreatic cancer people usually talk about. It is far less aggressive and completely treatable, in fact almost 100% curable as Jobs had it diagnosed at such an early stage.
ip26 1y ago
If there was a link, I would be thinking about all the superfund sites in Silicon Valley, pondering the manufacture of the Apple II, demographic clustering, or whether there was an unusually strong smoking culture at young Apple Computer, rather than some unique mental stress of the job.

erksa 1y ago

Not just a huge influence w/ Apple. Bill Atkinson was a dedicated photographer who did a lot to help bring the idea of sharing memories together. He and his associated printed and sent tons of photography all around the world. The was loved among photographers as well. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/photocard-by-bill-atkinson/id333208430 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/photocard-by-bill-atkinson/id3...

pmoriarty 1y ago
More of his photos can be found at https://billatkinson.com/ https://billatkinson.com/

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beagle3 1y ago

Thanks, Bill. Rest in Peace. I was amazed by Bill's software seeing it on a Mac back then - MacPaint mostly, then HyperCard. I was not even 10, but I was already programming, and spent hours trying to figure out how to implement MacPaint's Lasso on my humble ZX Spectrum. (With some success, but not quite as elegant...) If you want to experience HyperCard, John Earnest (RodgerTheGreat on HN[0]) built Decker[1] that runs on both the web and natively, and captures the aesthetic and most stuff perfectly. It uses Lil as a programming language - it is different than HyperTalk, but beautiful in its own right. (It doesn't read as English quite the way HyperTalk does, but it is more regular and easier to write - it's a readable/writable vector language, quite unlike those other ones ...) [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=RodgerTheGreat https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=RodgerTheGreat [1] https://beyondloom.com/decker/ https://beyondloom.com/decker/

CodeWriter23 1y ago

FatBits was life altering for me.

jnaina 1y ago

A sad for me. I spent countless hours building HyperCard stacks and creating artwork in MacPaint, in college. A true legend. RIP. Fat Bits forever.

yreg 1y ago

"How many man-years did it take to write QuickDraw?", the Byte magazine reporter asked Steve. Steve turned to look at Bill. "Bill, how long did you spend writing Quickdraw?" "Well, I worked on it on and off for four years", Bill replied. Steve paused for a beat and then turned back to the Byte reporter. "Twenty-four man-years. We invested twenty-four man-years in QuickDraw." Obviously, Steve figured that one Atkinson year equaled six man years, which may have been a modest estimate. http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Mythical_Man_Year.txt http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Mythical_Man_Year.txt

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Claudette81 1y ago

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tdhz77 1y ago

I asked Bill if he thought I could become an engineer even after earning my degree in sociology and political science. I really enjoyed writing software at the time but had no formal training. He laughed as he did and said of course, and you will be better than most. He found it as a strength and not a weakness. I will miss him.

vovavili 1y ago
These degrees tend to prepare you quite well for programming, since at top-tier universities they are quite heavy on use of R and statistical modelling.
- pjmorris 1y ago
  I'm willing to be a cup of coffee that the OP's degree and Atkinson's advice preceded the existence of R. I'm going to excerpt a mid-80's interview of Butler Lampson from Susan Lammer's book 'Programmers At Work' to illustrate my guess at what Atkinson might've been thinking... LAMPSON: I used to think that undergraduate computer-science education was bad, and that it should be outlawed. Recently I realized that position isn’t reasonable. An undergraduate degree in computer science is a perfectly respectable professional degree, just like electrical engineering or business administration. But I do think it’s a serious mistake to take an undergraduate degree in computer science if you intend to study it in graduate school. INTERVIEWER: Why? LAMPSON: Because most of what you learn won’t have any long-term significance. You won’t learn new ways of using your mind, which does you more good than learning the details of how to write a compiler, which is what you’re likely to get from undergraduate computer science. I think the world would be much better off if all the graduate computer-science departments would get together and agree not to accept anybody with a bachelor’s degree in computer science. Those people should be required to take a remedial year to learn something respectable like mathematics or history, before going on to graduate-level computer science. However, I don’t see that happening.

leakycap 1y ago

I truly believe Mr. Atkinson's dedication to his craft was part of the reason I and so many others loved the Mac and got into computers I will continue to admire him and his way of problem solving, speaking about your past work -- successes and lessons learned

kabdib 1y ago

the source code of quickdraw is art

mathattack 1y ago

"What a man, what a mind, what gifts to the world he left us." What a tribute! He was famous at the time, though now perhaps an unsung hero in leading us into a GUI world.

brador 1y ago

Pancreatic cancer. That’s what got Steve too.