Times Change.... and often for the better

Bill Marriott wjm at wjm.org
Sat Dec 3 21:01:28 EST 2005


Bill Atkinson gets all the credit for HyperCard, but it was actually Dan 
Winkler who created HyperTalk. I hope Dan has his mansion and early 
retirement as well.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertalk

Bill

"Richard Gaskin" <ambassador at fourthworld.com> wrote 
in message news:43922CDF.6080409 at fourthworld.com...
> Bill Marriott wrote:
>
>> Back in the day when there was just MetaCard, they had a free demo 
>> version that supported just 10 lines of code per handler, and then the 
>> least expensive registration option was $999.
>>
>> I wrote the company back then and suggested they release a version priced 
>> somewhat (ok, significantly) lower for all the people who wanted to use 
>> MetaCard in a non-commercial, or "business productivity" way. Scott 
>> Rainey answered me. I was basically "flamed" for suggesting this, and 
>> told with disdain how they had already "thought this issue through" 
>> completely, how such pricing would kill the business, how supporting 
>> "hobbyists" would take away from improving the software, how I lacked any 
>> business sense, how my marketing education was deficient, etc. etc. (Not 
>> making this up.)
>
> There's implication and then there's inference, with a lot of room in 
> between.
>
> As someone who used to argue with Dr. Raney weekly and finally came to
> admire and respect him, I feel compelled to offer this tidbit about him
> I've learned over the years:
>
> Raney has an unusually efficient way of communicating.  Whereas most
> people spend a certain amount of their human interactions doing social
> rituals unrelated to the purpose of the communication (e.g., if you want
> to ask your neighbor for a cup of sugar you first ask how she's doing),
> Raney gets in, gets the point, and moves on to the next thing on his 
> plate.
>
> Maybe it's his obesssion with efficiency (the engine _is_ pretty tight,
> after all).  I don't know where it comes from, I just know that the more
> I came to know him the less it bothered me, and as the years went by I
> would sometimes see his written interactions with other people as
> completely innocuous, maybe even evidencing a dry sense of humor (ok, very 
> dry), and yet the newcomer would walk away offended by the communication.
>
> Even more mysterious, I've seen several instances where people on other 
> lists make claims about his work that are factually incorrect, he shows up 
> only to correct them in a simple matter-of-fact way, and they insist he 
> came out of nowhere and started a fight.  It's the damndest thing, but 
> I've seen more than a dozen misperceptions like that, and yet time and 
> again the full mail log shows their memory of events to be backwards from 
> what actually happened. It's almost like his presence has the ability to 
> cloud men's minds. :)
>
> It is true that he writes with an authoritative tone, but he has the 
> knowledge and background to back it up.  In all the times I tried to argue 
> with him he was incorrect only once, and quickly changed his position to 
> support mine once I presented better data.  He's no mental slouch, nor 
> particularly stubborn so long as he's presented with solid supportable 
> facts.
>
> He's quite knowledgeable about the things he writes about, and I've
> never seen him be unfair.
>
> In brief, I've found Raney an acquired taste, but really very enjoyable 
> once I got to know him.  I found things became more enjoyable when my 
> conversations with him involved things other than me telling him that 
> everything he's doing is wrong.
>
> After having come to know him a bit more, I can say with some confidence
> that his intention was not to be dismissive, simply to get the the point
> in the most efficient way.  While it may seem brusk at first, his
> conversational efficiency lets him move on to the next thing, and moving
> on keeps his desk clear, and keeping his desk clear has helped him
> single-handledly accomplish more than most armies of well-funded xTalk
> developers before or since.
>
> So lest we discount his as some crazy madman (which he may not deny anyway 
> <g>), consider this before passing final judgement on the
> soundness of his business strategy:
>
> While we wait to see if Rev's low-price strategy will prove worth the
> higher support and marketing costs that come with such a move, one thing 
> we know for sure is that for all the history of xTalks only two men have 
> ever earned a graceful early retirement from developing an xTalk engine: 
> Bill Atkinson, and Scott Raney.
>
> He can be an unusual communicator, but he's also one of the smartest and 
> most successful developers I've ever met.
>
> --
>  Richard Gaskin
>  Managing Editor, revJournal
>  _______________________________________________________
>  Rev tips, tutorials and more: http://www.revJournal.com
>
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