I'll never forget learning basic HyperCard usage in Computer Class in seventh grade... in 2005. My public middle school had just got brand new shiny white iMacs... which they used exclusively to run the Classic Mac (or whatever it was called) emulator, so we could learn HyperCard and use some ancient monochrome typing tutor.<p>I was always annoyed that "Computer Class" was taught like this--having students follow step-by-step instructions to the letter to "learn" how to use ancient software with almost zero room for creativity or exploration. Trying to "color outside the lines" and use any of these tools for anything other than the explicit purpose of the curriculum was forbidden. I remember recognizing that HyperCard seemed like an old cross between HTML and PowerPoint, and I really wanted to try making a game with it... but my teacher wouldn't allow it. "Computer Class" basically always felt like we were being rigidly instructed how to do the menial white-collar office work of a decade prior, instead of allowing us to unlock our creativity and explore all the cool stuff this fancy new technology could actually do.<p>I often got the vibe that these teachers really didn't know how to do literally anything with the computers they were teaching us to use, outside of exactly what they were teaching us how to do... and they were afraid that we'd figure out how to use the computers better than them.<p>What do kids in middle-class public middle schools learn in "Computer Class" these days? Is it still just typing, basic Office use, and HTML4? What's a "Computer Class" like now that everyone carries one around in their pocket at all times?
The HyperCard Users Guide was good, but it was after my uncle loaned me his copies of "The Complete Hypercard Handbook"[0] and "HyperTalk 2.0 The Book" that I really got obsessed. I was 9 years old and reading these thick tomes cover to cover, and building test stacks for each obscure function. The code examples were full of jokes that were way over my head but I loved it nontheless (or maybe that's part of why I did love it).<p><a href="https://archive.org/details/The_Complete_HyperCard_Handbook" rel="nofollow">https://archive.org/details/The_Complete_HyperCard_Handbook</a>
Posted recently: HyperCard Adventures, a a way to run HyperCard in your browser on an emulated Macintosh. <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19237052" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19237052</a><p>Archive.org has similar tech that lets you browse a bunch of old HyperCard stacks. <a href="https://blog.archive.org/2017/08/11/hypercard-on-the-archive-celebrating-30-years-of-hypercard/" rel="nofollow">https://blog.archive.org/2017/08/11/hypercard-on-the-archive...</a> They also have Teach Yourself HyperCard (1989) <a href="https://archive.org/details/TeachYourselfHyperCardforAppleMacintosh/page/n1" rel="nofollow">https://archive.org/details/TeachYourselfHyperCardforAppleMa...</a><p>Vipercard is an open source re-creation <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16675180" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16675180</a>
Here is a question that I don't have an answer to: why was HyperCard so good? In simple terms you could say it opened a door to a new set of possibilities, that it was the precursor to the internet, etc. But I can't escape the sense that HyperCard demonstrated the potential for things that have not been realized. Anyone else have that sense, that somethings have been lost in what we have now?
I was 9 years old in 1987 when my dad bought the first family computer: a Macintosh SE. HyperCard immediately captured my imagination and I remember spending many long hours working on my stacks and pouring over this very guide, and pining for the critical second half of the documention the <i>HyperCard Script
Language Guide</i>.<p>It's hard to describe how out of reach basic documentation seemed to a child at the time compared to today where anything you want to learn about programming is readily available for free to anyone with an internet connection.
There is a direct line from HyperCard to where I am now.<p>I started programming as a hobbyist on the Apple //e in BASIC and 65C02 assembly language. But, I released a much better version of Eliza written in HyperCard (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA</a>) and submitted it on AOL and to the freeware FTP archives around 1993. It also used an XFNC that let me use the original MacinTalk text to speech engine and the newer PlainTalk.<p>A professor at another college had been looking for an Eliza HyperCard stack to use with his HyperCard based Gopher server. He reached out to me on AOL and that was my first paying side gig.<p>Having some freelance software under my belt in college at the no name school I was attending helped me stand out and get an internship my junior year in 1995 in the much larger city where I still live.<p>That led to my first job when I came back a year later at the company where I interned.<p>Side note: Writing the Eliza clone has been my go to “Hello World” program for years. I’ve written versions in AppleSoft Basic that used SAM (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_Automatic_Mouth" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_Automatic_Mouth</a>), GW-Basic, DEC VAX DCL, VB6, C# on Windows Mobile, JavaScript, and PHP.
Hypercard powered the first, afaik, multimedia yearbook, at South Eugene high school, in Oregon, in 1991. I designed the UI. Hypercard was perfect for pulling that photo and text data together, and we burned it onto 650MB CDROMs, velcro'd to the inner back of each hardbound yearbook.
I got started with QBasic, but really it was Hypercard that showed me the power of programming when I built a multi-media presentation that included laser disc cut-scenes for a school project.<p>Hypercard was really the gateway drug to programming, like web/JS is today.
I used Hypercard to design UI back then, UI was primitive compared to today, but the knowledge of how to design functional and useful UI was also very early. Hypercard made it easy to create interactive design you could actually interact with instead of just looking at.
I wouldn’t normally just post a link to an HN search, but I happen to have just searched HN for HyperCard... and well it’s definitely a favorite of HN:<p><a href="https://hn.algolia.com/?query=hypercard&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story" rel="nofollow">https://hn.algolia.com/?query=hypercard&sort=byPopularity&pr...</a><p>(I had missed these previous discussions and I’m a fairly regular HN reader.)
Never saw this before, how cool. It makes you think about the current state of software: the main difference is that we can do the same things as is seen here, but in the browser. Apart from that our day-to-day software might even be less advanced. Apps like Notion come to mind as a modern day equivalent. The only thing is that this is more than 30 years ago!