Sure enough, 45 minutes into the 2016 WWDC keynote, Tim Cook – not an SVP, but Tim himself! – unveiled Swift Playgrounds for iPad, “a new way to learn to code.” Because I’d been thinking about it, I had my tweet ready: “I personally think a way to learn Swift is not what the iPad needs – it needs a 21st Century HyperCard. But let’s see.”
Later, John Gruber (whose Daring Fireball blog is to Apple what BBC Radio 4’s Today show is to British politics) provided a glimmer of hope: “Swift Playgrounds = the new HyperCard?”
I have an iBook G3 specifically for OS9, and one of the things I have installed on it and occasionally play with is HyperCard – an absolutely amazing and fascinating piece of technology that Apple should release as-is for iOS just for curiosity’s sake.
In any event, just like the full-blown IDE for iOS we talked about earlier, it’s stuff like Swift Playgrounds that operating systems like iOS and Android really need if anyone ever wants to take them seriously as the future of computing.
As if App Store and Google Play were not full of crap… And I really, really hope that these rigid locked down systems are not the future of computing.
you might check out http://www.supercard.us/index.html – I got it as part of a bundle a couple of months ago & it’s a fun toy
I never really used Hypercard, so I looked for a Youtube video overview, and found this little gem:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFX1otbE_wU
I’m one of those who got into coding thanks to HyperCard. I missed the text based era with the Apple II, C64, ZX Spectrum etc. and BASIC code being printed in computer magazines. My mother did however buy a Mac Classic that came with a copy of HyperCard 2.1. I started creating my own stacks around age 9, before I even knew any English. Most were simple adventure games where you simply had to find the button that took you to the next screen. Several of my friends were inspired to create their own games this way. I was the only one that went on to study computer science though.
Even though I started some very ambitious project in my late teens my programming knowledge never went past simple if and repeat statements. I never fully grasped the idea behind a function. There were a few simple tutorials but nothing to ease you into more advanced topics. Instead of doing things the “proper” way I had to come up with really convoluted solutions to work around my limitations. That in it self was a great learning experience but I do wish I had managed to progress further.
Here’s a screenshot from the last stack I created for a school project just months before beginning my CS education: https://imgur.com/lJ5mlRV (That’s Mac OS 9 with a Kaleidoscope theme, not OS X)
(I never seem to get tired talking about HyperCard. Here’s two older posts: http://www.osnews.com/permalink?605781 , http://www.osnews.com/permalink?431127 )
If you want something akin to HyperCard, LiveCode’s probably your best bet.
Edited 2016-07-14 19:55 UTC
Saying that Swift Playground is not like HyperCard is like saying a potato is not like an orange – obviously self evident.
The former is a teaching tool, targeting children and young adults. The latter is a ‘simplified’ development tool that is nevertheless capable of creating highly functional programs.
The two obviously have much different purposes and goals.
About a year ago LiveCode made itself open source. You can find out more about it here: https://livecode.org/ Enjoy!