I'm just going to talk about Hypercard again for a bit.
It frustrates me to no end that the only way to run hypercard stacks today is to boot a Mac Classic emulator, and the load the stack in to hypercard in the emulator.
AFAIK, the whole thing was interpreted. We should be able to write a hypercard player for any platform.
Hypercard was a tool for Non-programmers to make programs.
The things that were made in hypercard are pretty simple, all things considered, but they could look and feel very polished, and it was way ahead of a lot of other tools in that regard.
If you've never used it, think of Hypercard as Powerpoint with functions and variable.
Hypercard could be used to build full applications. Things that looked liked Native MacOS apps.
Douglas Adams wrote this app for calculating the volume of the nest of some bird I've never seen: https://archive.org/details/DouglasAdamsMegapode
But beyond calculating the volume of the nests of obscure birds, Hypercard could be used to stitch together applications that did pretty much anything.
Myst was built in Hypercard, for example. But so were hundreds of other games and programs by amateurs.
The point of hypercard was that it was accessible to people who were not developers. Anyone could reasonably build something with this tool.
Most people that I've spoken to about it said that it felt to them like the future.
Lots of companies out there, and a few open source projects, have tried to bring Hypercard back to the world.
Livecode is a pretty decent example. Their platform is pretty easy to use, and you can make some cool apps that are crossplatform with it. iOS, Android, Web, whatever. There's even an Open Source version.
But live code is still way more complicated than hypercard ever was. As a developer, I find it limiting. As a hobbyist, I find it needlessly complex.
All the big open source projects tend to suffer from the same kind of feature creep. Or, not even feature creep. It's not that they end up too complex, it's that they start that way.
These aren't tools built for users, to make it easy for a user to make things. These are tools built for developers, to make it less painful to do the stuff they don't like doing.
That's fine, I guess, but that's not what made hypercard special.
We need more tools built for regular folks. We need more tools that don't come with the baggage of learning to code, of dealing with the open source community.
We need more tools that help people do things, rather than just tools that help coders code.
@ajr We need something for software development similar to how Scratch is for game design + animation
@cigazze I mean, if it's done right it'll be better for some kinds of game development than scratch.
@ajr yeah true, Scratch isn't very powerful + is pretty kid-oriented. just the best already-existent example I can think of
@ajr I fully agree, but this means introducing people gently into coding, as I gather from your #HyperCard posts, not necessarily giving them 'simple' tools but powerful ones.
And it does not have to mean that they need to start with if(){}else{};
@saper go spend some time with HyperCard in an emulator, so you can understand where im coming from. I think you'll be impressed.
@ajr I read a lot about it I think I know what you mean, will try for real
@ajr even as a professional programmer, I find it obnoxious how hard it is to make tools to make my life easier. I’m not so enamored of programming that I want to do it in my off-time to make my work-time more efficient. :/
I'm intrigued by this thought.
Would you include things which help creative types to do their work?
Editor apps for writers?
Things like Mastodon which let us chat async?
@Algot the conversation started as a discussion of the old HyperCard app for Mac, which was a tool to let non-programmers build applications and games.
In general, though, yes. Text editors, word processors, image editors, etc. those are tools to help people make things. They should be accessible for non-technical users. The barrier of entry must be lowered.
I *loved* HyperCard, using it with my middle school students.
I am consistently dismayed by the lack of new versions of such seminal applications.
@Algot There is an "almost" hypercard clone called Live Code. It has an open source version, and would probably be great for classroom use.
It's not as easy as hypercard, but it's a bit more powerful (the nature of programs has changed, LiveCode adapted with it.)
I still think it's not to the point of usability that Hypercard was, but it's closer than anything else I've seen.
Twine also serves as a good hypercard analog, from the hypertext side of things.
Planning and usability often take a backseat to showing off how awesome you can code stuff and how many features you can jam in.
But sometimes someone smart AND geared towards building comprehensible tools works out an adapter technology (like Mastodon built on top of GNU social, if I'm not mistaken -- I don't know as much about the latter as the former, and I know very little about the underlying aspects of the former).
@ajr Scratch?
@LogicalDash Scratch is certainly not a bad tool, but it's still pretty far off from what Hypercard was about.
It's a great learning tool, but it's starting to feel archaic in it's own way.
@ajr ok
Smalltalk?
@LogicalDash As a programming language, that's more or less exactly what I'm looking for. Smalltalk is a re-implementation of Hypertalk.
The thing we're missing, there, though is the UI. Hypercard was more than just hypertalk.
@ajr @LogicalDash Other way around. Smalltalk inspired Hypertalk. https://books.google.com/books?id=fToEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA49&lpg=PA49&dq=smalltalk+hypertalk&source=bl&ots=1dcenlVyrE&sig=AVFOcTWziht18fTUZFcV4eW0nkI&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjcvO_V6M7TAhUnrFQKHQExDEsQ6AEIKjAD#v=onepage&q=smalltalk%20hypertalk&f=false
@ajr I started to get excited about Livecode for a minute there. I think I actually tried to look for it the other day and my browser crashed and I forgot because I've generally got about 30 or more active tabs I'm trying to get to.
Maybe we should find HyperCard's original developers and see if we can crowdfund a project for a new, improved update.
@Euphoria @ajr It looks like there is a commercial product, Supercard, which runs on OSX and allows for import of Hypercard stacks. http://www.supercard.us/got-hypercard.html
*john cleese voice* "We're getting better."
Hypercard may be gone, but stuff like DOSbox will get created sometimes, when we can bootstrap (software sense) chunks of the past into the future with emulators and emulators RUNNING emulators and and and.
Seriously, we're getting better at it. We'll never be perfect, but nothing ever is.
Hopefully it's a small consolation. <3
@sydneyfalk Hypercard was Mac OS only. It works in emulators, but it's a massive pain to get running, and totally not worth the effort for regular users.
Not to mention, even if it was easy to get it to work, it's an ancient piece of software, and modern users deserve better tools.
I knew that about Hypercard (it's about the only thing I *did* know about Hypercard), but mentioned DOSbox as an example of older techs that aren't entirely shitcanned and get preserved (or even improved at times) for modern uses.
If someone writes a "new Hypercard", in the sense of something with good usability, I think that'd be a good thing -- and I do see efforts made now and then to produce beginner-accessible tools.
@sydneyfalk Live Code isn't bad. It's not backwards compatible with hypercard, which is a shame.
It's too complicated. It's showing it's age, and it's on the pricey side, if you want to release to mobile.
It's not bad, but it's not great.
I had the urge to build a rapid prototype of a mobile app (very simple stuff, a "generate three random items from lists" thing), so I used a toolkit that I knew could generate Android apps from other efforts I was making (to create a visual novel) to do it.
Ren'Py is definitely not a near-zero-effort toolkit, but it was simpler than looking for another harness and potentially another language. Someone built it on top of Python and (stuff I don't know for Android building).
@sydneyfalk Ren'Py isn't bad. I've fiddled with it in the past, but I didn't know it could build for Android.
I've been meaning to spend more time with it.
It took me some juggling stuff, figuring out what thing to plug into what thing, but it did work when it was all said and done. The Play store imposes certain limitations Ren'Py abides by, etc. etc., or you can develop as a pure APK that you have to install yourself. That kind of stuff.
It's worth looking at. (And perhaps I should dust off my visual novel concept again. I'm so bad at building branching anything, though. Sigh.)
That's why God (or whatever deity is responsible) gave us Mastodon, an easy way to find collaborators. 😉
@sydneyfalk
I was trying to cover all the bases there, but I haven't quite figured out the atheist substitute for a deity is yet. Evolution? Random chance?
@ajr
Darn atheists refusing to get together to decide on standards. 🙄 Isn't it funny how most theists totally miss the point of /being/ an atheist?
For a while I called myself an "apatheist" because I don't know if there's a god or gods and I really think it shouldn't matter when it comes to how we treat each other and our fellow creatures and this wonderful planet that hasn't tossed us off of it yet.
(oh, and SOME atheists are indeed trying to develop a standard of a sort -- I can't know if it'll get enough traction or avoid the pitfalls of power structures that have come before, but I am technically a reverend in the First Church of Atheism myself. ^_^ I hope it does something good, but so far it seems to have little RL presence, which people usually want to take a 'religion' seriously as such.)
I had no idea there were Atheist churches.
I've witnessed a number of arguments including Atheists, though, generally being against religion, or certain aspects of it.
I think it's nice for like-minded people to join together in community. It seems to help people in so many ways.
@Euphoria @ajr @sydneyfalk
I find the term "worldview" more useful than "religion", as it accepts that all outlooks need fundamental axioms taken on faith :)
But the thing is, Andy, the two don't necessarily correlate.
I actually know people who claim to think that "faith" is a bad thing, though I find that hard to understand. I think if they really examined themselves and their lives well they'd have to agree that faith enters into their existence more than they realize, while Faith may not.
@Euphoria thanks for the reply :)
I'm curious to know how you distinguish between faith and Faith – if you have some, does it really matter what the object is?
If yes, on what basis?
If no, why is "religion" so bad?
I'm no expert, @andrewdotnich. I have nothing specifically against "religion", but against the way people allow their "Faith" to separate them from & reject others based on their beliefs, practices & choice of community especially when one's holy book, the book they claim to live by, says "Thou shalt not kill" & that only seems to apply to people of their own Faith & not "heretics" or "pagans" of other beliefs.
Still, I have faith that people are mostly good, kind & nonjudgmental as individuals
I think a lot of folks confuse the definite abuses by some organizations (religious or not) with absolutes, and then consider any organization 'suspect'.
I do think power corrupts, and I do think those who find themselves with responsibility need to take care not to fall into that trap -- but I don't think 'community' is itself invalid and auto-abusive.
It's all people, and as much as I don't get people, I do love humanity for their potential.
Me too. But then, I'm a bit odd in that I love all living creatures. Yes, even ants and bees and cockroaches.
@Euphoria @sydneyfalk "atheist substitute for a deity" is kind of a bad way to think about it.
There is no need to substitute. There just isn't.
I took it to mean "what accounts for things going in good directions versus bad directions", and in this case I'd say 'luck' is what I'd arrive at -- but it is kind of an awkward phrasing for the question.
(Not that I was offended -- I wasn't, even I use 'god' as a figure of speech sometimes, the concept is inextricable from a wide exposure to human culture -- but the real question is, "What does a religion without god ascribe good things to?")
The only answers I ever came up with were 'physics' and 'luck', in the end. Physics is why nature does what nature does ("why are some people born with X advantageous aspect?!"), and luck is simply going to account for whether it happened to us or furthers our own aims ("why am I specifically lacking X aspect?")
Obviously the exact logic structures vary for different things, but the rough concept has held up well for me. :D
@sydneyfalk @Euphoria @ajr the ideals of human thinking and philosophy? Common sense for the good of all? All kinds of ways to go without having a supernatural arbiter of 'goodness'.
@gemlog Alas, "common sense" seems to be rather uncommon.
@sydneyfalk @ajr
@gemlog @sydneyfalk @ajr @Euphoria So true. It's misnamed.
It's true. Though compassion has been seen as exclusively the domain of pious pursuits throughout history, it's quite possible to be a good person without ever wondering if a god even exists.
However, that skew in place, it's near impossible to read writings on 'good' and 'evil' without coming in direct contact with religious concepts.
That's so true, @sydneyfalk. It really amazes me sometimes. There are so many contradictions (it seems to me) in religions that I'm unable to wrap my head around. I can't even wrap my head around how other people can be so absolutely sure that their religions are correct, and that all others aren't. It must be sad to believe the majority of people in the world are damned.
I'm still working on a lot of other issues, so for now, cockroaches that meet me will end up dead. ^_^ But ants and bees, I simply try to avoid when possible. I don't like killing anything, but I do not live in a world where I can avoid it entirely.
As for contradictions -- I don't understand people, and I have largely set religious beliefs (theist or atheist) aside as "sometimes largely incomprehensible". So I focus on other stuff, like writing. :)
I am actually the proud owner of one of your books, @sydneyfalk.
I'm happy to learn that I'm not the only person to not understand people (including myself). Of course I don't understand much of anything else any better, especially why other people think I'm nuts for not wanting to destroy the lovely homes that spiders have taken lots of time and effort to build in order to raise their families and live comfortably.
I was kind of joking. I know there's no substitute, @ajr
It's like how people, atheist or not, grow up with expressions like "Thank God!". I know a lot of people who use that expression long after realizing they're actually atheist or agnostic. It'd be awesome if we could come up with a list of better, updated expressions with no need to mention a deity.
@Euphoria @sydneyfalk @ajr I like to use the word "Providence" as an Agnostic person
I realize it's not something that pulls in Hypercard specifically, but things like that do sometimes get created and seen through to relative fruition. It's possible something excellent and analogous could be done for an optimized Mac emu of some sort, plus some sort of release framework, and a big ball of middle-stuff, leaving new users with an accessible, specialized sublanguage designed analogously to Hypercard.
And we let it die.
It doesn't exist anymore. Even accessing things that were written with it takes an unreasonable amount of effort.
It is entirely unreasonable that these labors be lost today, but they are. (We are shitty stewards of history.)