Think Retro: How HyperCard inspired a generation of future developers

Re:Think Retro: How HyperCard inspired a generation of futur... by andybak on Friday January 16, 2015 @04:37AM (#8897953)

We need better, approachable routes into programming.

I love Python and in many ways it's an ideal introductory language but it's roots are in the command line and you have to learn a lot of Unix cruft that shouldn't be strictly necessary to get started.

Processing (or maybe Nodebox and it's kin) are the spiritual heirs to Logo but don't help bridge the gap from fun to useful.

HTML+CSS+JS are available on every single machine with nothing but a text editor needed to get started but - oh the cruft you have to imbibe to get anything useful done...

Someone once said that Excel is the dark matter of the software universe. It probably accounts for most running software in the world that any other environment/language and has a lot going for it:

1. it's immediately practical and positioned well to help people solve real problems. 2. The transition from "I'm not coding" to "This is pretty much coding" is gradual and imperceptible 3. It has a very visual environment with lots of immediate feedback

However - it doesn't help you get from the final stage of "amazing feats of wonder that should never have been done in Excel" to "a real program in a sane environment". Many people who construct those amazing feats of wonder don't even realise that what they are doing IS programming.

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Re:Think Retro: How HyperCard inspired a generation of futur... by pavlov on Friday January 16, 2015 @06:19AM (#8898209)

Many people who construct those amazing feats of wonder don't even realise that what they are doing IS programming.

Maybe that should be the goal?

For thousands of years, scribes were a separate profession. Today everybody can write. When you make post-it note or shopping list, you probably don't think to yourself:

"Hmm, I'm being a scribe here, I wonder what real scribes use to make high-quality notes..."

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Re:Think Retro: How HyperCard inspired a generation of futur... by brudgers on Friday January 16, 2015 @08:27AM (#8898695)

Programming without knowing it is at the core of the spreadsheet. And Spreadsheets require programming in assembly language.

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Re:Think Retro: How HyperCard inspired a generation of futur... by Retra on Friday January 16, 2015 @02:06PM (#8900939)

I'm confused. How do spreadsheets require programming in assembly in a way that's different from other software?

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Re:Think Retro: How HyperCard inspired a generation of futur... by brudgers on Friday January 16, 2015 @03:00PM (#8901293)

Using formulas in a spreadsheet is like assembly language programming: explicit memory addressing, jump as the primary control structure, etc. It's all place based. The nice library of subroutines doesn't change how low level the design of a spreadsheet has to be.

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Re:Think Retro: How HyperCard inspired a generation of futur... by Retra on Friday January 16, 2015 @03:32PM (#8901490)

Ok, that makes sense. It may not be a very clean analogy, but I see what it is getting at.

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Re:Think Retro: How HyperCard inspired a generation of futur... by RodgerTheGreat on Friday January 16, 2015 @07:16AM (#8898366)

Processing _is_ Java. If you learn Processing, the only things holding you back from writing "real" programs in Java are making a main() entrypoint, learning a few new APIs (depending on what you're making) and applying a few more access modifiers than you're used to. I use it regularly to ease beginners into programming with Java and the transition has always been a snap.

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Re:Think Retro: How HyperCard inspired a generation of futur... by pbhjpbhj on Friday January 16, 2015 @08:12AM (#8898608)

Just to put some context on "you have to learn a lot of Unix cruft that shouldn't be strictly necessary to get started" (andybak; my emphasis. I just did an intro course on Python - it's not my first programming and I'm pretty familiar with Linux command lines.

That said after much trial and error I settled on PyCharm - installation can be done using GUI tools (it's in Ubuntu repos) and you don't need to leave the PyCharm interface to run interactive programs.

Then there are things like iPython, IDLE (part of raspbian I believe). The whole course used a purpose-made browser based interpreter so one didn't have to install if you didn't want to.

I actually took the course as I was seeing Python crop up in educational contexts and wanted a jump start on my children.

Python, and a ton more programming languages are available in repls, eg http://repl.it/languages/Python.

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Re:Think Retro: How HyperCard inspired a generation of futur... by copsarebastards on Friday January 16, 2015 @08:32AM (#8898732)

> However - it doesn't help you get from the final stage of "amazing feats of wonder that should never have been done in Excel" to "a real program in a sane environment". Many people who construct those amazing feats of wonder don't even realise that what they are doing IS programming.

And sometimes if they do realize it's programming, they use that as a reason to pass the buck to a developer. At my first job, I inherited a number of Excel "codebases" in this way.

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Re:Think Retro: How HyperCard inspired a generation of futur... by JulianMorrison on Friday January 16, 2015 @05:01AM (#8898020)

You can write Android apps in Processing, FWIW. So it may be more useful than you think.

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