Think Retro: How HyperCard inspired a generation of future developers

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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