The Computer Chronicles - Hypercard (1987)

I love the artistry and creativity around the HyperCard community. Years ago I stumbled on this (wonderfully dorky) episode of Computer Chronicles, that focuses on HyperCard: ▶ this video I love how the used-car salesman created his own application to help potential buyers find the right car. This was truly the “bicycle of the mind” era for computing; the user base was fairly self-selected, and people wanted to take full advantage of this new tool. [1]. The range of HyperCard was pretty amazing — famously, Myst was originally created with it: link 1: link

An easy-to-use end-user programming and hypertext system for the 68K Mac, with MacPaint-like visual layout and an English-like (AppleScript-like) scripting language (HyperTalk). [1] Also a cult favorite on HN, as it was an end-user programming system that actually resulted in a million (or so) end users creating their own apps (perhaps foreshadowing the era of people creating their own web sites with html and javascript, or games using Flash and actionscript.) And famously used to create the game Myst. HyperCard came out of a leave of absence that Bill Atkinson took from Apple after Microsoft had forced Apple to kill MacBASIC. Unfortunately the deal he made with Apple to distribute it for free with every Mac was only for two years, and Apple replaced it with a playback-only "HyperCard Player" while the authoring capability was sold as a separate product by Claris - effectively killing in-the-box end-user programming on the Mac. [2] (AppleScript resembled HyperTalk, but didn't include an easy-to-use authoring environment, perhaps to avoid competing with HyperCard). Development stagnated as well; no native PowerPC version was created, and HyperCard never evolved to run over a network, much less the internet (even though HyperCard influenced NCSA Mosaic and Apple was certainly aware of early networked hypertext systems like Intermedia, which ran on the Mac). [1] ▶ this video [2] link

Went down an internet rabbit hole and stumbled across Hypercard earlier today. HyperCard, for those unfamiliar, was an early Macintosh software offering that sought to make interactive application development accessible to non-technical users. It combined a flat-file database with a GUI. It used the skeuomorphic paradigm of "cards" in a stack to represent the visual state and the navigation flow within a user-defined app. Using the editor and Paint-like overlay tools, you could drag and drop different elements onto a card, and attach functionality to those by coding in HyperTalk with a "natural language"-like syntax. Everything was live-edited. So when a user typed in a form that existed on a card, it was saved on the fly in the flat file representing that card or stack of cards. It can be considered an early hypermedia system, predating the web. You could also mix and match cards from different stacks to create new stacks, which seems like a powerful concept. While I can kind of understand why HyperCard was phased out, I can't think of a modern equivalent that provides this similar, modular functionality. In fact, it seems like the web would be a natural home for such a concept, but I don't know of any mainstream examples. What do you think? What's the modern equivalent to HyperCard? For reference: "Why HyperCard was so f*ing Great!": link HyperCard Games: link The Computer Chronicles: HyperCard (1987): ▶ this video Wiki: link