BBC:
In my own personal retelling of computer history, even though the Macintosh was released in 1984, its potential was not truly achieved until 1987. What really confirmed the earth-shattering nature of the Mac for me was that year’s release of a piece of software called HyperCard. This one-two punch of Macintosh and HyperCard changed how I thought about computers.
If you know about HyperCard, the mere mention of it will elicit a sense of delight at its crackling wonder. But if you’ve never heard of it, then allow me to enlighten you.
For young me, HyperCard really was magical.
I tried it, was impressed. But I took it for granted, and then it disappeared while I was focused on learning other uses for my new computer.
Wrote many, many stacks… Even wrote many XCMD’s and XFCN’s. Loved HyperCard – hands down one of the most brilliant pieces of software ever written.
I saw HyperCard come and go from a distance back then. So, I don’t know much of anything about it.
But I did get involved in a contemporary of HC: Helix RADE. “RADE” stands for Rapid Application Development Environment. It’s also a DBMS (Database Management System).
I started using it in the late ’80s and have been using it continuously for my business over the ensuing decades through to today.
I’m thinking HC’s “cards” and “stacks” just may be analogous to RADE’s “views” and “relations”. It also still supports AppleScript, and I’ve used it to collate and sort data from spreadsheets to then, via AppleScript, generate fully formatted inDesign page layouts for 1K-page directories.
Check it out at: qsatoolworks.com
I wrote a ton of stacks as well, XCMD/XFCN’s as well. Thank you Lightspeed C and Metrowerks CodeWarrior.
Those were fun times.