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From: chuq@plaid.Sun.COM (Chuq Von Rospach)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Hypercard: what's it really worth?
Message-ID: <35054@sun.uucp>
Date: Mon, 30-Nov-87 13:53:36 EST
Article-I.D.: sun.35054
Posted: Mon Nov 30 13:53:36 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 3-Dec-87 05:39:32 EST
References: <6956@ut-ngp.UUCP>
Sender: news@sun.uucp
Reply-To: chuq@sun.UUCP (Chuq Von Rospach)
Organization: Fictional Reality, uLtd
Lines: 102
Keywords: Hypercard

>I have the following comments, mostly negative, to make about Hypercard,
>for what it's worth. 

and, of course, the rebuttal.

>1. I agree with the MacUser author that it's being foisted upon the market
>   without passing the litmus test of retail competition. One can only
>   speculate how far Hypercard would get if it were quietly slipped onto
>   retail shelves for $295.00.

Except that HyperCard wasn't designed as a high-price, high-end product. It
was designed to be a give-away base for other applications (see my other,
recent posting on Hypercard as a latter day Applesoft -- I'll spare you and
not repeat it).

And I still think it'd sell well at the high price, at that. But it's TRUE
worth is letting everyone have at it, and see what happens in the stackware
market. So far, the stackware market has been amazing. Imagine what'll
happen in a year when folks really get a handle on the thing.

(and as a side comment, and product that is 'quietly slipped' on the market
deserves to die.)

>2. Its consumption of bytes is horrifying, both in the RAM and on the disk.
>   A full-blown, heavy-duty Hyperperson (what a concept, eh?) would need at
>   least 2 megs of RAM and a 20 meg hard disk just to stay alive.

It's no worse than any other product of its type. You start shoving the same
data in any database and you'll see similar or worse performance. High end
products require hardware support.

As another example, Ready, Set, Go! 4.0 takes up lots of disk. a LOT more
than the same files in word 3.0 format (which is larger than word 1.05
format, by the way). But if you look at the output of RSG vs. Word, you see
that there are lots of things being done by RSG that Word can't even sneeze
at. You can't ask for a program to sing and dance and then complain when it
requires ballet shoes instead of lead weights. If you only want to allow a
program macWrite resources, you can't expect it to outperform a cray.

>I resent
>   the way this kind of thing is vogue these days, and find it hard to 
>   believe that it's not being done deliberately, to stimulate sales of
>   higher-capacity systems, as well as to arbitrarily define the market in
>   ways of questionable benefit to the consumers, e.g., Hypercard making
>   DA's obsolete within a year or two.  	

You can resent it all you want, but it's called progress. You can complain
that HyperCard won't fit on an old ROM 128K mac, but you couldn't write
something like Hypercard on that machine. you also can't write it on a
commodore 64, and TRS-80, an IBM-PC or my dear departed IMSAI (state of the
art -- tarbell cassette, 16K of Ram, and a whole 8K of ROM!). 

Anything that pushes the state of the art pushes beyond the capabilities of
older hardware. It's a fact of life, not just limited to the Mac. I remember
when the sun2 was the state of the art. I remember when macwrite was the
best thing since sliced bread. Hell, I remember when the 780 was the Unix
box of choice, for that matter.

As you force more and more functionality into your software, you force more
and more requirements on the underlying hardware. You need more hardware,
more speed, more oomph. This is evolution. As our software gets better and
better, the hardware underneath must follow. Any attempt to claim otherwise
goes against the entire history of the computer industry. 

(and if you don't believe it, go live with Wordstar on an Imsai. I'll wave
at you from the window...)

>3. Hypertalk is somewhat overrated. True, it's "easier" than C or Pascal, but
>   in no sense of the word is it a "programming language" in the first place.

Bull. You haven't worked with it much, or you wouldn't say that. It is a
different sort of programming language, but it is complete and quite
powerful. Somewhat specialized, but it is in a specialized environment.

>   I'll change my mind when somebody writes a flight simulator in Hypertalk.

Would you settle for adventure? Hypertalk doesn't claim to be a real time
environment, so asking for a flight simulator in Hypertalk is like claiming
that Cobol isn't a real language because nobody has writen a flight
simulator in that. I do know that I can write adventure in Hypertalk. I
believe I can even implement Rogue. But asking for real-time from a system
that wasn't designed for real time operation is stupid.

>   Furthermore, I doubt that the "ease" of learning/using Hypertalk (and it's
>   no mean feat to do so, relying solely on the HELP card or the manual, 
>   neither of which addresses the subject in depth) will be that big an 
>   advantage for the business user.

Wrong. Again, see my other comments on Hypercard, Applesoft, and puttering.

>4. In my opinion, Hypercard's most salient innovation is its way of getting
>   around, but even that's not special. Just click on a box for the next
>   subject. It's not all that different from the Guidance DA on Pagemaker 2.0.

Except, of course, that it took a professional programmer to write the
Guidance DA on Pagemaker. Anyone can implement the same in Hypercard with a
little time and puttering. There's the big difference, and why Hypercard is
a big deal. It brings the power of the programmer to the puttering hobbyist.

chuq
---
Chuq "Fixed in 4.0" Von Rospach			chuq@sun.COM	Delphi: CHUQ