Ask HN: Modern Day Equivalent to HyperCard?

This page summarizes the projects mentioned and recommended in the original post on news.ycombinator.com

SurveyJS - Open-Source JSON Form Builder to Create Dynamic Forms Right in Your App
With SurveyJS form UI libraries, you can build and style forms in a fully-integrated drag & drop form builder, render them in your JS app, and store form submission data in any backend, inc. PHP, ASP.NET Core, and Node.js.
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InfluxDB - Power Real-Time Data Analytics at Scale
Get real-time insights from all types of time series data with InfluxDB. Ingest, query, and analyze billions of data points in real-time with unbounded cardinality.
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  • scratch-www

    Standalone web client for Scratch

  • LiveCode is about the closest literal logical successor to HyperCard.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiveCode?wprov=sfti1

    That said, I think Scratch is a better learning environment these days and you can develop workable apps in the style of HyperCard. There are plenty of tutorials, documentation, and examples to work from.

    https://scratch.mit.edu

  • Ryven

    Flow-based visual scripting for Python

  • I really wish Livecode hadn't pulled their opensource/Community Edition (and I'd be very glad for someone to do something with that code).

    Gambas is something I keep wanting to try and seems promising.

    I did one small app w/ Python and TKinter, but it was a dense wall of text/code when I was finished and not something I was interested in revisiting. I keep seeing suggestions that Python w/ QT support is supposed to be quite good.

    One unlikely option is Google's Blockly (which I wish had a stand-alone desktop implementation which would make graphical programs), which has a nifty version implementing OpenSCAD:

    https://www.blockscad3d.com/editor/

    which I've used a fair bit. Moving on from there, there is: https://github.com/derkork/openscad-graph-editor which has the advantage of encompassing the entirety of OpenSCAD. It's also possible to wrap up Python using PythonSCAD.org

    If you're willing to consider other node/line connection systems two promising options are:

    https://ryven.org/

    and

    https://nodezator.com/

    What sort of coding, on what sort of projects do you want to do?

  • SurveyJS

    Open-Source JSON Form Builder to Create Dynamic Forms Right in Your App. With SurveyJS form UI libraries, you can build and style forms in a fully-integrated drag & drop form builder, render them in your JS app, and store form submission data in any backend, inc. PHP, ASP.NET Core, and Node.js.

    SurveyJS logo
  • openscad-graph-editor

    OpenSCAD Graph Editor

  • I really wish Livecode hadn't pulled their opensource/Community Edition (and I'd be very glad for someone to do something with that code).

    Gambas is something I keep wanting to try and seems promising.

    I did one small app w/ Python and TKinter, but it was a dense wall of text/code when I was finished and not something I was interested in revisiting. I keep seeing suggestions that Python w/ QT support is supposed to be quite good.

    One unlikely option is Google's Blockly (which I wish had a stand-alone desktop implementation which would make graphical programs), which has a nifty version implementing OpenSCAD:

    https://www.blockscad3d.com/editor/

    which I've used a fair bit. Moving on from there, there is: https://github.com/derkork/openscad-graph-editor which has the advantage of encompassing the entirety of OpenSCAD. It's also possible to wrap up Python using PythonSCAD.org

    If you're willing to consider other node/line connection systems two promising options are:

    https://ryven.org/

    and

    https://nodezator.com/

    What sort of coding, on what sort of projects do you want to do?

  • nodezator

    A multi-purpose visual node editor for the Python programming language

  • I really wish Livecode hadn't pulled their opensource/Community Edition (and I'd be very glad for someone to do something with that code).

    Gambas is something I keep wanting to try and seems promising.

    I did one small app w/ Python and TKinter, but it was a dense wall of text/code when I was finished and not something I was interested in revisiting. I keep seeing suggestions that Python w/ QT support is supposed to be quite good.

    One unlikely option is Google's Blockly (which I wish had a stand-alone desktop implementation which would make graphical programs), which has a nifty version implementing OpenSCAD:

    https://www.blockscad3d.com/editor/

    which I've used a fair bit. Moving on from there, there is: https://github.com/derkork/openscad-graph-editor which has the advantage of encompassing the entirety of OpenSCAD. It's also possible to wrap up Python using PythonSCAD.org

    If you're willing to consider other node/line connection systems two promising options are:

    https://ryven.org/

    and

    https://nodezator.com/

    What sort of coding, on what sort of projects do you want to do?

  • twinejs

    Twine, a tool for telling interactive, nonlinear stories

  • I think you and your kid would have fun designing a Choose Your Own Adventure game in Twine. https://twinery.org/

    FWIW, there are a bunch of simple modern GUI builders, including GUI builders for the web, but none of them are popular, due to the sweet spot of supply and demand that Hypercard hit.

    When Hypercard launched, it came with every Mac, it was free, and there was nothing else like it available on the Mac. On the Mac, the alternative to Hypercard was to layout UI widgets in code, with no GUI builder at all, or eventually to pay $$$ for a professional-grade IDE like CodeWarrior. As an entry-level user with no budget, if you wanted a GUI builder for the Mac, you got Hypercard, or nothing. This created a community of Hypercard enthusiasts.

    Furthermore, when Hypercard launched, Macs had a standard screen resolution. Every Mac sold had a screen resolution of 512x342 pixels, so you could know for sure how your cards would look on any Mac. Supporting resizable GUIs is one of the hardest things to do in any GUI builder. (How should the buttons layout when the screen gets very small, like a phone? Or very wide, like a 16:9 monitor?) Today, Xcode uses a sophisticated constraint solver / theorem prover to allow developers to build resizable UIs in a GUI; it works pretty well, I think, but it's never going to be as easy to learn as "drag the button onto the screen and it's going to look exactly like that everywhere."

    The last issue is the real killer for modern Hypercard wannabes: it's a small step from a web GUI builder to raw HTML/CSS. You don't have to pay big bucks to have access to professional-grade HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Sure, they're not that easy to learn, but you can teach a kid to write interactive web pages, no problem.

    As a result, the demand for a simple GUI builder is lower than it was for Hypercard, and even when you do capture a user, they tend to outgrow your product, and there are a zillion competitors, so none of them can build a community with real traction.

  • blockly

    The web-based visual programming editor.

  • If your kid is already doing Scratch, Blockly is a really easy next step.

    https://developers.google.com/blockly

    Critically, Blockly can emit JavaScript and Python, plus it supports plugins for extended functionality. So the kid can stay inside the blockly universe for as long as they like, but easily peer under the hood and get into Python or JavaScript as soon as they like.

  • rivet

    The open-source visual AI programming environment and TypeScript library

  • InfluxDB

    Power Real-Time Data Analytics at Scale. Get real-time insights from all types of time series data with InfluxDB. Ingest, query, and analyze billions of data points in real-time with unbounded cardinality.

    InfluxDB logo
  • p5.js-web-editor

    The p5.js Editor is a website for creating p5.js sketches, with a focus on making coding accessible and inclusive for artists, designers, educators, beginners, and anyone else! You can create, share, or remix p5.js sketches without needing to download or configure anything.

  • not sure it counts as "HyperCard" but for environments there's p5js.org (https://editor.p5js.org/)

    > I wish there were an offline environment like that built into firefox. You can bring up a javascript console, but it's not really a friendly development environment. And something like visual studio code is capable but large and complicated.

    That seems like a day project in electron. At least to MVP. Use CodeMirror or Monaco. As long as you pass the right options you can run the user's code in an iframe in a separate process. That way you can kill it even if it has an infinite loop.

  • Godot

    Godot Engine – Multi-platform 2D and 3D game engine

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