[OT] Atkinson Interview, Pt 2

[dunbarx at aol.com]

Hi.


I hear you.


I always thought that Dan Winkler was the driving force behind adding the scripting portion, and that Bill accepted it, but was not particularly enamored of it.


I heard that both men were astonished at the sudden tidal wave of interest, and the demand for detailed knowledge of the language. Enter the "Script Language Guide", and Goodman, et. al...


But though the original Eureka concept was a drag-and-drop gadget, in my opinion level five was the real revolution. Bill once said "...he has made thousands of stacks..." and these had to have been for the same reasons we all did, to author software, test tidbits, and create tools. I certainly cannot gainsay anything Bill says; I just have always found it odd that he is most fond of, and most proud of level 4.


I would not be here at all if HC stopped at level 4.


Craig

nal goals for HyperCard were.  Although all of us here changed HC's User Level to 5 early on, it was only one of five user levels built into the program, and none of the others allowed open scripting at all, and it wasn't the default.Very different focus, more about "authoring" than "programming".LiveCode is a very capable programming system, a




-----Original Message-----
From: Richard Gaskin <ambassador at fourthworld.com>
To: use-livecode <use-livecode at lists.runrev.com>
Sent: Mon, May 2, 2016 10:45 am
Subject: Re: [OT] Atkinson Interview, Pt 2

Jerry Jensen wrote: >> On May 1, 2016, at 7:48 PM, DunbarX at aol.com wrote: >> >> Richard. >> >> Is it possible Bill A. is unaware of LiveCode? He intimated that >> the current "Hypercard" is a program called "iBooks Author". >> >> Really? > > He attended and spoke at the LC conference in San Jose. He had > written most of PhotoCard in ObjectiveC and was looking at the > cross-platform possibilities of LC. Since then, I don’t know > his plan or interest. I was surprised as well that he didn’t > mention LC in the interview.When I met him at RevCon/San Jose, we had a very good talk about his work and his legacy.  Although he was not originally a scheduled speaker, during our chat I proposed the idea and he was quite receptive to it, and he gave a great talk.But as far as LiveCode goes, I think he finds it interesting but my sense is that it's solving as different problem than HyperCard was.  The languages are similar, but the product focus is very different.I should clarify that this is more my own interpretation than anything he said directly. All I have to base my hunch on is less his words than his actions:  AFAIK he hasn't mentioned LC since, and my two attempts to follow up with him after the conference via email met with no reply.That LiveCode isn't particularly important to someone well versed in low-level programming and heavily invested in a single platform isn't surprising.  He has the tools he needs, and of course he knows how to use them well.It may be helpful to consider the evolution of HyperCard, and Atkinson's description of his goals in inventing it from the interview.When HC was still in its early "WildCard" phase internally, it had no scripting language.There are a few stories about how the notion of a scripting language became introduced to the projects, some more interesting than others, but by all accounts it was a relatively late-state addition.Remember that the term used during much of those early days was "authoring", not programming.  Atkinson, like Appleton (SuperCard) and other xTalk makers, have expressed many times a certain delightful surprise over the scope of things made with the tools they created.I believe Atkinson's characterization of Apple's iBooks Author is fitting for what his original goals for HyperCard were.  Although all of us here changed HC's User Level to 5 early on, it was only one of five user levels built into the program, and none of the others allowed open scripting at all, and it wasn't the default.Very different focus, more about "authoring" than "programming".LiveCode is a very capable programming system, and while many of us have used to to build authoring systems it's not much of an authoring system out of the box.  Like Bill Appleton once said about SuperCard, which applies equally well to LC:    HyperCard is a multimedia authoring environment.  SuperCard is     a tool you can use to build multimedia authoring environments.Since the advent of the Web, while programming remains a critical role for native apps, most of what we used to think of as authoring has become the domain of vertical web tools.LC how has HTML output, but formats != workflow.  For all its deployment options, LC is a programming environment, not an authoring system.I believe Bill Atkinson's vision was about authoring, so no matter how capable LC is, it's really quite a very different product than the one he made.  The flavor of the language remains the same, but it seems the language wasn't really the center of Atkinson's original vision.--   Richard Gaskin  Fourth World Systems  Software Design and Development for the Desktop, Mobile, and the Web  ____________________________________________________________________  Ambassador at FourthWorld.com                http://www.FourthWorld.com_______________________________________________use-livecode mailing listuse-livecode at lists.runrev.comPlease visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences:http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode