undefined | Better HN

story

0 pointsjawngee14y ago0 comments

> Hypercard is different from systems like Director > in what isn't there: the cancerous complexity.

No offense, but you're reaching for straws now. Any stack of any complexity was just as complex as the equivalent in Director. I'm not sure what you were doing in 96 or so, but I was making a living with Director after cutting my teeth with some serious SuperCard action. I wrote a precursor to AIM/ICQ for our feeble AppleTalk network with SuperCard and that was not simple at all.

I guess if you were writing simple back and forth stacks, then yes I see your argument. But anything truly useful beyond that was just as complex as anything else. I appreciate your romantic notions to the contrary however.

0 comments

thaumaturgy14y ago

I never used Director, so I can't speak to that. And, by '96, I had graduated from HyperCard into C and Pascal.

But: I spent a lot of time in HyperCard, and I can assure you that the field of HyperCard complexity was not limited to just "simple back and forth stacks" or "anything truly useful beyond that". HyperCard afforded a really nice way of gradually ramping up complexity and approaching complex-on-the-outside problems with simple-on-the-inside code.

I doubt I could remember any of my own HyperCard projects at this point if my life depended on it. But, I can tell you about a HyperCard project a good friend of mine did: he called it "MusicMaker", and it came with a piano keyboard, multiple synthesizers, and its own unique musical notation system which allowed you to easily translate any sheet music into text which the HyperCard stack could synthesize and play on the piano keys. It could teach people music better than just about any other piece of software at the time. This was not, as I recall, remarkably challenging for him, and we both had a lot of fun with it.

I think any network-related programming is going to suck. Tricks of the Mac Game Programming Gurus had an entire chapter devoted to it, as I recall, in which most of the chapter could be summed up as, "OpenTransport sucks". So, I don't think it's fair to use a networking-related program as an example of a challenging HyperCard (or SuperCard) project.

> I appreciate your romantic notions to the contrary however.

(edited for snark)

Please try to keep the snark to a minimum. Thanks.

jawngeeOP14y ago

Yes, and I wrote a MIDI sequencer in Borland Delphi in about 1997 and that wasn't particularly challenging either, in fact simpler than attempting similar in SuperCard: http://www.sonicspot.com/aliendiskosystems/aliendiskosystems...

The point is, people tend to gloss and shine and wax poetic about HyperCard and it's ilk, but if it was so profoundly simple and awesome, why aren't SuperCard and related (MetaCard or Toolbook anyone?) prominent development platforms? Because that simplicity becomes complexity once you cross a certain threshold.

> Please try to keep the snark to a minimum. Thanks.

Please keep attempts at editing people's personalities at a minimum. It's how I talk, it's how I write, I make no apologies for it.

Cheers!

jacques_chester14y ago

The technical qualities of a technology are not the sole determinant of its success or failure.

asciilifeform14y ago

> I'm not sure what you were doing in 96 or so

I was a boy. A boy playing with Hypercard. As hinted at rather transparently in the article.

> But anything truly useful beyond that was just as complex as anything else.

Complexity of interface is different from complexity back-stage.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse