In late 70s, Alan Kay, the spiritual father of the Mac os, Smalltalk, was wrestling with a very powerful and important and yet simple question, "How to make a programming language simple enough a child could use but grow in power as the child's intellectual powers grew too?" Simula, Smalltalk and later Hypercard tried to come up with ways to address that question. Supporting english-like was key and various ways to perform the same statement function/command was needed too.
Btw, Wolfram/Alpha is moving rapidly to provide both vast content and a very powerful natural language way of getting answers and solutions. When, not if, Mathematica supports a much more richer GUI for making interactive standalone apps, you will see another incarnation of "HyperCard." Wolfram's CDF file format is a step in that direction. Check out Mathematica Home Edition (300, as apposed to 3,000), with its strange, crazy legal limitations of using it, may in a few years produce apps for mobile and desktop platforms; may finally left those crazy limitations too. ;-) And a footnote, I understand from a few friends who knows well HC early history, Wolfram looked closely into perhaps making Mma, during its early years, language more like HyperTalk and wanting to support Hypercard in some way. Oh and I would love someone to make an external for LC to talk with MathLink, please. Btw, Runrev, if there are coat tails to ride, supporting W/A might be one to consider. ;-) just a few cents... Andrew _______________________________________________ use-livecode mailing list [email protected] Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode
