When they ask, what is this written in?

[Richmond Mathewson]

Chipp Walters wrote:

"The problem with "Hypercard" and "xTalk" is for many they represent
non-professional approaches to programming."

Surely only in an ever-diminishing circle of people who worked with Hypercard?

Also, as far as I am aware the language for programming Hypercard is
"HyperTalk" rather than xTalk.

Certainly, in "PC-land" very few people have heard of either Hypercard or xTalk.

I also recall, many, many years ago, some fairly dubious, non-professional
programming being done in PASCAL, FORTRAN, and so forth (err, probably in
FORTH as well); so why Hypercard should be blackened as "non-professional" (when, it is the people who use HC, not HC itself, who might be non-professional) is a bit obscure. I, personally, grew up on LEGO blocks, and when a "LEGO-blocklike" programming option came along I leapt at it and have kept with it ever since - and, do not see it in any way as 'inferior' or 'non-professional' when compared with command-line languages. This has recently been hammered into my mind as I have had to see my 16 year old through the "joys" of PASCAL.

I program on what people who care about accuracy might like to term a "semi-professional level"; and as such the work I do here, in Bulgaria, is admired both by end-users and those who have me do programming for them. I have never been asked in what language I program in as people don't really care; what they do care about is that they end up with a fully-functional application that does what they want it to in the shortest possible time: AND, SURELY, that is the point, rather than worrying overmuch about how to explain how one works one's "Magic Spells"!

sincerely, Richmond Mathewson.
____________________________________________________________

A Thorn in the flesh is better than a failed Systems Development Life Cycle.
____________________________________________________________