The web is close in some respects (HTML is easy) and not in others (servers and single-page apps are not).
I suppose, in another respect, Excel is a successor for many, though it isn't a good solution for making apps of any sort.
Surprisingly, the closest I've seen has been Microsoft's Project Siena[1]. I've not used it extensively, but my 5 or 10 minute made it look like it had the dirt-simple-to-get-started appeal of HyperCard and VB.
Anyone know of other "spiritual successors" out there?
[1] http://apps.microsoft.com/windows/en-us/app/microsoft-projec...
I'm hoping Mozilla's AppMaker[3] comes to something, but I haven't been able to actually make it work yet.
I can't say that I find any of these really (yet) hitting the sweet spot that HyperCard did, but that may be my own ignorance. :-D
Remember that HyperCard was introduced in 1987 or so, the GUI/WIMP era was just getting started. The learning curve of writing a Macintosh application was incredibly steep - nearly impossible IMO - but here was a way to make a simple point-and-click app that actually did something (write to a file, do some calculations, show information, even talk out the serial port, etc) with a minimal amount of lifting. My first paid piece of software was a point-of-sale application written in HyperCard. And it worked just fine.
VB was pretty much the equivalent for Windows, once it came along.