| A day of acquaintance, And then the longer span of custom. But first — The hour of astonishment. |
That was the mystically-enchanting mantra at the end of the "About" box for Apple's "HyperCard" software, an early programming environment on the Macintosh. Before HTML even existed, HyperCard was an easy way to build collections of pages ("cards"), link them, and respond to user actions. HyperCard was created by genius Apple programmer Bill Atkinson, who had previously developed much of MacPaint and the fundamental "QuickDraw" code that formed the underpinnings of the first MacOS graphical user interface.
HyperCard (1987-2004) will long be remembered, and missed. It was indeed full of astonishment, and for a lot longer than one hour. As Shakespeare said of Cleopatra, "Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale / Her infinite variety ..." — like HyperCard, to a young programmer.
(cf. [1], [2], [3], PersonalProgrammingHistory (2002-04-02), ...) - ^z - 2013-01-27