Phil Davis wrote:
> To me, "insanely great" is the appropriate way to describe the
> Hypercard experience and vision. After a dozen years of mainframe
> development, I spent a year in the late 80's being retrained in
> software development - this time with the human condition, not the
> computer configuration, as the primary design focus. Hypercard was my
> playground, test lab, toolbox, workbench and canvas. It was nothing
> less than a life-changing experience.
Same here. I came to computing in 1987 when I was hired to draw maps for an
environmental geophysics firm (<http://www.spectrum-geophysics.com>, if you
need such services) while working my way through film school. One day my
boss encouraged me to play with HyperCard, neither of us quite certain what
it was at the time. When I accidentally discovered the "New Button" menu
item, my life changed forever. I dropped out of film school and never
looked back. Soon I was building apps for the office, and shortly after
SuperCard came out I had my first independent contracting gig.
And then came MetaCard. Those of you who've been on this list for a while
may remember what an ass I was when I first signed on: I had come from a
mostly Mac-centric view of life at the time, and had all sorts of opinions
about how MetaCard did things "wrong", from language elements to the object
model. Dammit, MC was the only way to get SuperCard projects to Windows, so
I had to use it anyway and did so grudgingly.
What a fool I was. Over time, with patient explanations from Scott Raney
and Kevin Miller about why MC does what it does and how it does it, I've
come to the opinion that in every case where I had a differing opinion about
MetaTalk, Raney's logic ultimately prevailed. MetaTalk is not perfect, but
it is far less imperfect than it's grand-daddy, HyperTalk, and all the other
dialects that have followed.
I find myself amazed every day at what I'm able to accomplish with MetaCard.
The product has done more for my business than any other single investment,
truly fulfilling the promise of what HyperCard could be.
While it's scary that Apple still doesn't recognize the strategic value of
supporting a 4GL for its OS (Microsoft figured this out long ago, ironically
inspired by HyperCard when they made VB -- which was prototyped in SuperCard
on a Mac), at least the language lives on -- and better than ever.
HyperCard is dead -- long live HyperTalk!
--
Richard Gaskin
Fourth World Media Corporation
Multimedia Design and Development for Mac, Windows, UNIX, and the Web
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