PythonCard vs HyperCard (was Re: Autocoding project proposal.)

[Tim Churches]

Jonathan Hogg wrote:
> [Side note: this is why I think PythonCard has gone off half-cocked. The
> great thing about HyperCard was HyperTalk - the language that clearly
> influenced the design of AppleScript. HyperCard was an incredibly powerful
> tool for non-programmers, many HyperCard authors had never read a
> programming book in their life; PythonCard looks set to be a useful tool for
> teaching people to program.]

Although I was doubtful at first, I now think that PythonCard is going
to be (quite soon) an incredibly useful tool. Unfortunately, it is badly
misnamed, becaise, as Johnathon points out, it is really aimed at
programmers (possibly non-professional programmers), not non-programmers
as HyperCard was (is?). Of course, all attempts to rigorously define
programmers and non-programmer are bound to fail because it is a
continuum in multiple dimensions.

PythonCard seems to be the Pythonic equivalent of Microsoft Visual Basic
(by which I mean the entire Visual Basic development environment in
which the programmer layouts out widgets on forms, sets properties
[attributes] for these widgets, and writes snippets of code which are
called when various events associated with each of the widgets occur -
not just the [not particularly good] VB programming language).
PythonCard even uses resource files just like Visual Basic does (.frm
files). Also much in common with Delphi/Kylix, or PowerBuilder etc.
Eventually I suspect PythonCard will acquire features similar to those
of Microsoft Access. MS Access can be regarded as a layer on top of the
Visual Basic development environment which allows the creation of quite
sophisticated applications while reducing the need to write VB code as
far as possible. HyperCard went (goes?) one step further than this by
making the programming language (HyperTalk) much more accessible to
non-programmers than VB ever will be. Perhaps the name "PythonCard"
reflects this aspiration, although at its current state of play (no
criticism intended), something like
"PythonicVisualBasicLikeDevelopmentEnvironment" is probably more
appropriate. I think they should stick with 'PythonCard'.

Tim C