Why HyperCard Had to Die (2011)

Comments (4)

os2warpman · 4h ago

Hypercard died because in 1997 Apple was 3-4 weeks away from bankruptcy and 1998 wasn't that great either.

Before that, Hypercard was so valuable to Apple that they kicked it out the door to Claris and only took it back when Claris turned into a disaster (due to the Apple disaster) and everyone quit to write software for BeOS (lol).

"A friend of a friend of a friend posted to macrumors that jobs killed it because he didn't like it" has as much evidentiary weight behind it as "An elite Knights Templar strike force broke into Apple HQ and stole the source code and threatened Jobs with death if he ever released another version because if you typed 'evilmagic' into the message box, a portal to hell opened up in your room and evil sexy demons were coming out and seducing all of the wholesome pure and innocent computer nerds learning hypercarding."

watersb · 3h ago

HyperCard inspired the initial development of Tcl/Tk.

The scripting language, HyperTalk, was picked up by WingZ, which was mostly a spreadsheet sort of application... but I think the layout was similar to Numbers on macOS.

labrador · 8h ago

I've been under the impression that Hypercard was superseded by Tim Berners-Lee and his World Wide Web. I'm old enough to have used Hypercard in the early days. The author calls HTML/JS/CSS a shit soup, but it can be as simple as Hypercard with the advantage that it reaches across machines through the network.

chmaynard · 8h ago

Much more heat than light in this angry, bitter rant.

Ask HN: The government of my country blocked VPN access. What should I use?

Ask HN: What to learn for math for modeling?

Apple App Store Review Mess

Ask HN: What to do when you suspect your interview is with a state operative?

Ask HN: Why hasn't x86 caught up with Apple M series?

Best up-to-date guides on Vibe Coding

Staying up to date on the best AI dev workflow?

Ask HN: How much better can the LLMs become assuming no AGI

Ask HN: How can I recover and run my old mobile game from the 2010s?

Ask HN: Anyone working on bringing software back from US clouds?

Ask HN: Services for Shutting Down a Startup?

Ask HN: Where can I see a live octopus in Maine?

Ask HN: How to teach a 4 year old to code?

CompactifAI Inference API

Ask HN: Did modern AI's coding abilities make you lose interest in programming?

Ask HN: What are the best Google alternatives in 2025?

Anthropick.com Redirects to ChatGPT

Ask HN: What to Do with Old iPads?

Ask HN: GitHub Copilot down?

Petition to stop Google from restricting sideloading and FOSS apps

Ask HN: Best codebases to study to learn software design?

Units of Economics of LLMs. Reply to Ed Zitron's "AI Is a Money Trap"

Ask HN: Does sentience put stress on the brain?

Ask HN: Is there a temp phone number like temp email?

Ask HN: How to Learn to Build Agentic AI Systems (Like Claude Code)

Out of curiosity: what kind of people use this "forum" (I mean Hacker News)?

Ask HN: Windows 11 Update Fail – Linux Distro Suggestions?

Ask HN: Why are so many services rejecting Google Voice numbers for signups?

Ask HN: What measures are you taking to stop AI crawlers?

Ask HN: Is backlink trading still a problem worth solving?

Ask HN: What should I use to run React Native tests on a device?

Stop squashing your commits. You're squashing your AI too

Ask HN: Are AI filters becoming stricter than society itself?

Ask HN: I just abandoned my PyCharm subscription, what should I use now?

Ask HN: Any experienced devs who use AI extensively in their work?

Ask HN: How do you find early stage startups to join

Why HyperCard Had to Die (2011)

Comments (4)