RE: [OT] HyperCard and the Interactive Web

[Alejandro Tejada]

Hi Lynn,

What a coincidence! Not long ago, I was reading
a book from Mark Steyn about the same topic.
He made some extraordinary predictions about
the future of humanity... :-O


Lynn Fredricks-2 wrote
> 
>> Things should be made slightly harder, not easier, for children; 
>> otherwise we will end up with a race like
>> those ones who were cannibalised in H.G. Wells' "Time Machine".
> EloiOS - one bright, efficient button accompanied by a dinner bell sound
> effect.
> 

Have a nice day!

Al

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Re: [OT] HyperCard and the Interactive Web

[Bob Sneidar]

ALL technology/ tools are a "crutch" in some sense. It's just that with simple 
tools we don't give up much in the way of understanding to use them, in fact we 
may even understand things better. Also, without certain tools, some things 
become impossible to accomplish. The real question is where along the line of 
advancing technology do we begin to trade understanding for ease of use. 

I say that nothing is free. You always trade one thing for another, and in the 
case of technology, we seem to be willing to trade pains we were made to cope 
with for pains we were not. At the root of it all is the reprehensible notion 
that "newer" ALWAYS means "better". It's why some can use the word "change" and 
almost everyone not trained to think things through hear "change for the 
better". 

Bob


On Feb 26, 2012, at 9:18 AM, Geoff Canyon wrote:

> We're wandering a bit here, but I disagree completely, so of course I
> should reply ;-)
> 
> Some 100 years ago, it was considered necessary to memorize log tables.
> That skill is now useless.
> 
> I remember (near 50 here as well) learning how to derive a square root.
> That skill is also useless.
> 
> I agree with you that "It is far more IMPORTANT that kids learn to think
> logically and coherently," but that doesn't at all mean that they learn a
> particular file structure, or machine UI. Kids today don't need to know
> what a command line is because the vast majority of them will never see one
> in their lives. Kids should learn how to think, but in the context of the
> environment they are/will operate in. A calculator is no more a crutch than
> is an automobile. People who drive (or fly) from New York to Los Angeles
> should not be first required to learn how to drive a horse and wagon across
> the country.
> 
> On Sun, Feb 26, 2012 at 2:15 AM, Richmond wrote:
> 
>> Speaking as a reactionary 50 year old; I think:
>> 
>> 1. No child under the age of 14 should be allowed any mathematical crutch
>> apart from a slide-rule.
>> 
>> I find, in my "EFL" school, that kids find sliderules rather interesting,
>> and they are able to SEE how numbers
>> work; something one cannot do with a pocket calculator.
>> 
>> 2. At 14 children should all be given something like a Pentium 2 with
>> FreeDOS and taught
>>   how to navigate themselves around a system with no GUI.
>> 
>> 3. At 14 children should be given a course in something like BASIC or LISP
>> on that GUI-less computer.
>> 
>> 3.1. Probably preceded by a few weeks "doing programming" on paper, and
>> messing around with buttons in cups.
>> 
>> 4. At 17-18 children should all be given a PC with an operating system
>> with a WIMP-GUI on it after
>>   they have passed a test to demonstrate their familiarity with a
>> Terminal emulator.
>> 
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Re: [OT] HyperCard and the Interactive Web

[Jerry Jensen]

On Feb 27, 2012, at 11:27 AM, Bob Sneidar wrote:

> My oinion is that at 18, all kids should be put through some kind of boot 
> camp like training, just so that they can learn how to do exactly what they 
> are told, no more, no less, in spite of what everyone else around them does. 
> That would go a LONG way towards their future education in anything. I am 
> still met with unbelief when I tell people that my first days in boot camp 
> involved obeying simple orders like left face, and that more than half the 
> squad got it wrong almost every time! Once one person does it wrong, others 
> see them doing something other than what they themselves did, and they start 
> second guessing themselves. Not wanting to be "different" they change their 
> minds even though they know it to be the wrong thing! 

CHEESE! CHEESE! STOP IT!


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Re: [OT] HyperCard and the Interactive Web

[Bob Sneidar]

My oinion is that at 18, all kids should be put through some kind of boot camp 
like training, just so that they can learn how to do exactly what they are 
told, no more, no less, in spite of what everyone else around them does. That 
would go a LONG way towards their future education in anything. I am still met 
with unbelief when I tell people that my first days in boot camp involved 
obeying simple orders like left face, and that more than half the squad got it 
wrong almost every time! Once one person does it wrong, others see them doing 
something other than what they themselves did, and they start second guessing 
themselves. Not wanting to be "different" they change their minds even though 
they know it to be the wrong thing! 

Bob


On Feb 26, 2012, at 12:15 AM, Richmond wrote:

> Speaking as a reactionary 50 year old; I think:
> 
> 1. No child under the age of 14 should be allowed any mathematical crutch 
> apart from a slide-rule.
> 
>  I find, in my "EFL" school, that kids find sliderules rather interesting, 
> and they are able to SEE how numbers
>  work; something one cannot do with a pocket calculator.
> 
> 2. At 14 children should all be given something like a Pentium 2 with FreeDOS 
> and taught
>how to navigate themselves around a system with no GUI.
> 
> 3. At 14 children should be given a course in something like BASIC or LISP on 
> that GUI-less computer.
> 
> 3.1. Probably preceded by a few weeks "doing programming" on paper, and 
> messing around with buttons in cups.
> 
> 4. At 17-18 children should all be given a PC with an operating system with a 
> WIMP-GUI on it after
>they have passed a test to demonstrate their familiarity with a Terminal 
> emulator.
> 
> It is far more IMPORTANT that kids learn to think logically and coherently 
> than possess fancy electronic
> equipment.


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Re: [OT] HyperCard and the Interactive Web

[Jerry Jensen]

On Feb 27, 2012, at 10:20 AM, Richmond wrote:
> 
> Veggie Burgers are awful; mainly because they are pretending to be something 
> else. Don't let "fake meat"
> put you off vegetarianism.

CHEESE! CHEESE! STOP IT!


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RE: [OT] HyperCard and the Interactive Web

[Lynn Fredricks]

> Things should be made slightly harder, not easier, for children; 
> otherwise we will end up with a race like
> those ones who were cannibalised in H.G. Wells' "Time Machine".

EloiOS - one bright, efficient button accompanied by a dinner bell sound
effect.

Best regards,

Lynn Fredricks
President
Paradigma Software
http://www.paradigmasoft.com

Valentina SQL Server: The Ultra-fast, Royalty Free Database Server 



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Re: [OT] HyperCard and the Interactive Web

[Richmond]

On 02/27/2012 04:40 PM, Geoff Canyon wrote:

On Feb 27, 2012, at 2:36 AM, Richmond  wrote:


... it is valuable knowledge insofar as you then are aware that by
eating meat you do it at a price; the suffering of vast numbers of animals, 
that can, quite easily be avoided.

Having eaten veggie burgers, we'll have to agree to disagree about the "easily be 
avoided" aspect ;-)


Veggie Burgers are awful; mainly because they are pretending to be 
something else. Don't let "fake meat"

put you off vegetarianism.





we should think about what the words "cultured" and "educated" mean. If all one 
wants to teach one's kids are things that
may have some pragmatic use, then we should scrap 90% of every school curriculum

I absolutely agree, and it is because I agree that I think that when it comes 
down to the command line or Bleak House, the command line should go.
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Re: [OT] HyperCard and the Interactive Web

[Geoff Canyon]

On Feb 27, 2012, at 2:36 AM, Richmond  wrote:

> ... it is valuable knowledge insofar as you then are aware that by
> eating meat you do it at a price; the suffering of vast numbers of animals, 
> that can, quite easily be avoided.

Having eaten veggie burgers, we'll have to agree to disagree about the "easily 
be avoided" aspect ;-)


> we should think about what the words "cultured" and "educated" mean. If all 
> one wants to teach one's kids are things that
> may have some pragmatic use, then we should scrap 90% of every school 
> curriculum

I absolutely agree, and it is because I agree that I think that when it comes 
down to the command line or Bleak House, the command line should go. 
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Re: [OT] HyperCard and the Interactive Web

[Richmond]

On 02/26/2012 10:53 PM, Geoff Canyon wrote:

It's interesting that you bring up the slaughterhouse analogy -- I've used
it on many occasions to make the opposite point: I know that cows are
butchered to make steaks. I've seen videos of it, in fact. I shouldn't have
to learn how to do it to order at McDonalds.


No, you shouldn't; but it is valuable knowledge insofar as you then are 
aware that by
eating meat you do it at a price; the suffering of vast numbers of 
animals, that can, quite easily be avoided.




There's a world of difference between "Kids today" and "computer
programmer." Forcing the 99.9% of kids who *won't* become computer
programmers to use a command line because of the .1% who will is like
forcing every kid to butcher a hog before they are allowed to eat bacon.


"Kids today" is the phrase used in Britain to justify NOT teaching 
literature written before 1945, history before 1914,

and the general dumbing down of most things.

Apart from any other considerations, while slide-rules  and command 
lines may not be all that useful nowadays


[mind you, you'd be hard put to quite a few things on a computer without 
some sort of nodding acquaintance with a terminal],


we should think about what the words "cultured" and "educated" mean. If 
all one wants to teach one's kids are things that
may have some pragmatic use, then we should scrap 90% of every school 
curriculum, so we can end up with an sort of
1984/Brave New World hybrid and say prayers to Henry "History is Bunk" 
Ford .




On Sun, Feb 26, 2012 at 12:14 PM, Richmondwrote:


   Kids today don't need to know

what a command line is because the vast majority of them will never see
one
in their lives.


Really? I wonder about that. Surely every potential computer programmer
should
have some sort of understanding of command lines. This is rather like
saying that
that children brought up in cities should have no understanding that
animals are slaughtered
so that they can have meat on their plates, because they will never see a
slaughter-house.

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Re: [OT] HyperCard and the Interactive Web

[Richmond]

On 02/27/2012 01:50 AM, Geoff Canyon wrote:

I think I still have a slide rule stashed away somewhere. It was my 
step-father's. I once asked (circa 1983) in a chemistry class if slide rules 
were allowed in addition to calculators, and everyone's head turned.

Richmond, to your point, check out what MIT is doing with Scratch Jr.: 
http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/archmage/658960


Yes, that is rather FUN. And only FUN.



Sent from my iPad

On Feb 26, 2012, at 5:28 PM, Graham Samuel  wrote:


BTW, I am fond of slide-rules but I haven't used mine for a good long time now.

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Re: [OT] HyperCard and the Interactive Web

[Kay C Lan]

On Sun, Feb 26, 2012 at 4:26 PM, Richmond wrote:

> I have hacked the system
> menus so NOTHING else is available at all.
>
> Sorry, I'm confused.

Were not previous posts all about how hopeless the kids today are because
they can't even fathom the file system, and here you are denying it to them.

Have I not read your evangelical posts about the freedom of Linux and the
evil of Apple's walled empire, and yet you've just hemmed your victims in,
with limited scope for using their imagination in any direction other than
where you deem it will be of value. Steve would be proud.

As you can guess I do not agree with your general line of argument, and as
others have pointed out, find it intriguing that you should choose 'the
command line' as the point of reference, when obviously there will be those
(particularly in the more traditional programming mailing lists who think
XTalk languages are a toy) who argue than anyone who can only deal with
command lines and not punch cards and assembler language are pampered and
uneducated in the true principles needed to 'understand' computers.

I'm with all those who say good riddance. Give me LC and make it as easy as
possible for me. The kids of today will do just fine.

The need to understand the file system? Please, it's only an illusion.
Someone posted that their students only know how to access their files via
Spotlight. I dream of the day my wife stops pointing and clicking to
navigate to a file and instead uses Spotlight. It's 1000 times faster. The
files do not reside neatly in alphabetical order in sub-folder that are
neatly ordered in folders. They are strewn across a HD as randomly as a
1000 teenage FaceBook posts and are managed by a database management system
that I'd be surprised if anyone here has spent any time studying at all.

In the future someone might come up with a beads, cup and tray illusion
although it's more likely to be a wall and tweet analogy. Either way, all
it will do is hide the underlying complexity so as to present us with the
fastest interaction what we 'percieve' to be something we know about.

All this thread has confirmed is that we are getting way too old ;-)

And just for reference, I take a slide-rule to work with me every day, but
only every use it about once or twice a year, on the odd occasion when I
think the computer systems are giving me duff gen. Invariably the computers
are right.

Which brings me to my own (long and probably boring) analogy.

Years ago a mate of mine was the navigator on a vessel which was taking a
scientific expedition to the antarctic. On board were a film crew who were
going to doing a documentary on the expedition itself - not really
interested in the mode of transport there and back.

Tiger, not one to avoid the limelight, decided - when one of the film crew
were in sight - why not dust off the old sextant and do a Sun shot. So
here's Tiger, sextant mounted, commanding the Capt to maintain a constant
heading whilst he takes the required three Sun shots. The film crew were
naturally intrigued and asked if they could film and ask a few questions.
Tiger was in his element.

Film Crew: "So Navigator Meadows, what are you doing?"
Tiger: "I'm taking a Sun shot, a means of celestial navigation to ensure we
are where we are suppose to be. You see, although this vessel is fitted
with the Litton72 Inertial Navigation System, the most advanced navigation
equipment known to man. It is made by man, and therefore prone to error. On
the other hand, since the dawn of time man has navigated by the stars,
fixed in heaven by the gods, precise throughout eternity. By performing
this Sun shot I'm just confirming that the INSs haven't started to wander.

Tiger then proceeded to get out his Almanac and extract the required
numbers to enter into the necessary formulas to combine with the figures
he'd got from his Sun shot to conclude with a Latitude and Longitude. With
an air or pomp he concluded by stabbing his pencil into the paper.

Film Crew: "Well Navigator Meadows, how are we doing?"
Tiger: "By my calculations, the INSs are doing just fine, they are within 2
nautical miles of where we are suppose to be, and considering the distance
we've already covered, that's very good indeed."

And so with that, the Film Crew packed up and went back to playing cards
and whatever else to while away the time.

Tiger confided in me later on, that his actual calculation had them 2000nm
away from where the INS said they were. Needles to say, he figured the INSs
were right and later, when no one was looking, did the Sun shots again to
figure out where he'd gone wrong.

I have a GPS on my bicycle. Many people have them in their cars. Do we all
really need to know how to use a sextant and an Almanac before we let these
things navigate for us?
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Re: [OT] HyperCard and the Interactive Web

[Richard Gaskin]

Roger Eller wrote:
> Imagine if Steve Jobs (RIP) had been simply given a Mac, iPod,
> iPhone, iPad when he was a child. Would he have worked to gain the basic
> understanding of all the underlying parts and code that brings forth the
> usefulness of those inventions?

I'm somewhat reluctant to prolong a thread that's so off-topic during a
time when discussion of one of LiveCode's three desktop engines is
considered a candidate for exclusion here, but I'm in a risk-taking mood
so here goes:


I think Jobs would have taken that knowledge and built something else
cool with it (it more accurately, Woz would have built something cool
with it and Jobs would have evangelized it into a must-have product ).

Tech always evolves, and people keep building more cool new tech.  From
metallurgy to the steam engine to the moonshot to being able to buy a
Core i7 from NewEgg for less than $200, there's always something that
still hasn't been invented yet, and it's always those same adventurous
thinkers generation after generation who take the dominant tech of their
day and move it forward to the day after.

Life today is easier in many respects that life before us, but by no
means as easy as it can be.

It's up to you, the readers of this list, or perhaps your children, to
get bored with the tech we have now and build something that will change
everything - until the next generation gets bored with it. :)

-- 
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World
  LiveCode training and consulting: http://www.fourthworld.com
  Webzine for LiveCode developers: http://www.LiveCodeJournal.com
  LiveCode Journal blog: http://LiveCodejournal.com/blog.irv

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Re: [OT] HyperCard and the Interactive Web

[Geoff Canyon]

I think I still have a slide rule stashed away somewhere. It was my 
step-father's. I once asked (circa 1983) in a chemistry class if slide rules 
were allowed in addition to calculators, and everyone's head turned. 

Richmond, to your point, check out what MIT is doing with Scratch Jr.: 
http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/archmage/658960

Sent from my iPad

On Feb 26, 2012, at 5:28 PM, Graham Samuel  wrote:

> BTW, I am fond of slide-rules but I haven't used mine for a good long time 
> now.

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Re: [OT] HyperCard and the Interactive Web

[Graham Samuel]

I'm (almost entirely) on Geoff's side with this. I am old enough to have worked 
on computers which wouldn't even boot up until some underpaid geek (me, 
sometimes) had put in a bootstrap program directly into the machine's RAM - 
this was done by flicking switches on a massive console. Output was to a 
teletype if we were lucky… programming was in a crude assembler and comments 
were distinctly an afterthought. Doubtless we were all heroic in our 
endeavours, but let's face it, productivity was microscopic compared with 
today's development environments.

I grabbed high level languages and then WIMP/GUIs with both hands, glad to 
leave geekdom behind. I love pretty well all the advances towards usability, 
productivity and clarity that have been made (at an enormous pace) throughout 
my long career. Hypercard and its successors and especially(for me) LiveCode 
fit into this line of progress (OK they may not be great for the vast teams 
that are apparently still needed for many commercial developments, but that's 
another discussion). I would say I am at least three orders of magnitude more 
productive now, within sight of the end of my technical life, than I was at the 
beginning. That may be a gross underestimate. So although I'm all for a solid 
grasp of first principles, I for one can't see the need for most kids to mess 
with empty machines and slide-rules. The really geeky ones will find their own 
way into the bit-twiddling world if that's what they want.

BTW, I am fond of slide-rules but I haven't used mine for a good long time now.

Graham

OnSun, 26 Feb 2012 11:18:27 -0600, Geoff Canyon  wrote:

> We're wandering a bit here, but I disagree completely, so of course I
> should reply ;-)
> 
> Some 100 years ago, it was considered necessary to memorize log tables.
> That skill is now useless.
> 
> I remember (near 50 here as well) learning how to derive a square root.
> That skill is also useless.
> 
> I agree with you that "It is far more IMPORTANT that kids learn to think
> logically and coherently," but that doesn't at all mean that they learn a
> particular file structure, or machine UI. Kids today don't need to know
> what a command line is because the vast majority of them will never see one
> in their lives. Kids should learn how to think, but in the context of the
> environment they are/will operate in. A calculator is no more a crutch than
> is an automobile. People who drive (or fly) from New York to Los Angeles
> should not be first required to learn how to drive a horse and wagon across
> the country.
> 
> On Sun, Feb 26, 2012 at 2:15 AM, Richmond wrote:
> 
>> Speaking as a reactionary 50 year old; I think:
>> 
>> 1. No child under the age of 14 should be allowed any mathematical crutch
>> apart from a slide-rule.
>> 
>> I find, in my "EFL" school, that kids find sliderules rather interesting,
>> and they are able to SEE how numbers
>> work; something one cannot do with a pocket calculator.
>> 
>> 2. At 14 children should all be given something like a Pentium 2 with
>> FreeDOS and taught
>>   how to navigate themselves around a system with no GUI.
>> 
>> 3. At 14 children should be given a course in something like BASIC or LISP
>> on that GUI-less computer.
>> 
>> 3.1. Probably preceded by a few weeks "doing programming" on paper, and
>> messing around with buttons in cups.
>> 
>> 4. At 17-18 children should all be given a PC with an operating system
>> with a WIMP-GUI on it after
>>   they have passed a test to demonstrate their familiarity with a
>> Terminal emulator.
>> 
> 

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Re: [OT] HyperCard and the Interactive Web

[Francis Nugent Dixon]

Hi from Beautiful Brittany,

Geoff wrote :

I remember (near 50 here as well) learning how to derive a square  
root.

That skill is also useless.

I agree with you that "It is far more IMPORTANT that kids learn to  
think
logically and coherently," but that doesn't at all mean that they  
learn a
particular file structure, or machine UI. Kids today don't need to  
know
what a command line is because the vast majority of them will never  
see one
in their lives. Kids should learn how to think, but in the context  
of the
environment they are/will operate in. A calculator is no more a  
crutch than
is an automobile. People who drive (or fly) from New York to Los  
Angeles
should not be first required to learn how to drive a horse and wagon  
across

the country.


Amen to that Geoff. I also remember how to calculate a square root  
with a paper
and pencil, and I am sure I never needed to do it since I learned it  
55 years ago.
However, I also learned how to start a fire with bow and string, and a  
piece of

wood, and I never used this technique either.

Let us say nevertheless that I could fend for myself if ever a neutron  
bomb
reduced my electronic world to zilch, but I don't think my kids could  
do that !


-Francis

"Windows is just a series of panes !"



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Re: [OT] HyperCard and the Interactive Web

[Geoff Canyon]

On Sun, Feb 26, 2012 at 12:14 PM, Richmond wrote:

>
>   Kids should learn how to think, but in the context of the
>> environment they are/will operate in.
>>
>
> Which may change at any moment; so the more things they are exposed to the
> better
> chance they have to adapt to whatever circumstances present themselves.


People have a limited ability to learn. We can't expose them to everything.
So to whatever extent possible, we should endeavor to expose them to 1. The
unchanging fundamentals 2. What is current/coming next, as we can identify
it.

The command line is neither of these. The unchanging fundamentals of
computers are things like algorithms, logic, and math, not the command
prompt. What is current is the Mac/Windows GUI and the iOS and Android
touch OSes -- again, *unless* you're teaching the small fraction that will
go on to work with computers at that level.

I'll admit that computing is unusual. First, it is a skill, not an
understanding. So unlike Math, for example, where the primes we deal with
today are the same primes Euclid dealt with, the field of computing is
ever-changing. And unlike, say, auto repair, it is changing incredibly
rapidly. But just like in auto repair, it is unnecessary to learn about the
specifics of the Pierce Arrow or the Stutz Bearcat in order to understand
how to service a Smart Car, it is unnecessary to learn how to program a
PDP-11 in order to understand how to use Google Docs.

Responding to something else you've said, I'm not against teaching
programming as a way of teaching kids to reason -- but is it the most
effective way? If not, then we're just being curmudgeonly to suggest it.

Finally, I should point out that by your logic, before kids get their hands
on one of those new-fangled command-line machines, they should have to
master the art of a time-share computer, of punched cards, and of machine
language (on at least a few different architectures, to be sure they fully
grasp it).
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Re: [OT] HyperCard and the Interactive Web

[Richmond]

On 02/26/2012 10:53 PM, Geoff Canyon wrote:

It's interesting that you bring up the slaughterhouse analogy -- I've used
it on many occasions to make the opposite point: I know that cows are
butchered to make steaks. I've seen videos of it, in fact. I shouldn't have
to learn how to do it to order at McDonalds.

There's a world of difference between "Kids today" and "computer
programmer." Forcing the 99.9% of kids who *won't* become computer
programmers to use a command line because of the .1% who will is like
forcing every kid to butcher a hog before they are allowed to eat bacon.


Has nobody thought about teaching a computer language as a way of 
teaching kids to reason?


Admittedly the command line is, perhaps, a bit far fetched; and the 
non-programmers can get on with their
Facebooking and whatever regardless [but they should not then say that 
they know "all about computers"].


I studied Latin for quite a few years; I cannot read a book in Latin 
(more's the pity); but what it did teach me was some reasoning,
some useful Indo-European roots, and an appreciation of the very real 
achievements of the past, on which, as is all too often overlooked,

all our current achievements are based.

However, a bit of BASIC, PASCAL, or, for that matter, a script in xTalk 
(aka Livecode) involving a few constants, variables,
loops and what-have-you, is not only valuable for the .1% who will 
become programmers qua programmers; it is also
a valuable mental exercise, and should foster a greater appreciation of 
the work that the .1% do; something that is

taken for granted far too much.



On Sun, Feb 26, 2012 at 12:14 PM, Richmondwrote:


   Kids today don't need to know

what a command line is because the vast majority of them will never see
one
in their lives.


Really? I wonder about that. Surely every potential computer programmer
should
have some sort of understanding of command lines. This is rather like
saying that
that children brought up in cities should have no understanding that
animals are slaughtered
so that they can have meat on their plates, because they will never see a
slaughter-house.

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Re: [OT] HyperCard and the Interactive Web

[Geoff Canyon]

It's interesting that you bring up the slaughterhouse analogy -- I've used
it on many occasions to make the opposite point: I know that cows are
butchered to make steaks. I've seen videos of it, in fact. I shouldn't have
to learn how to do it to order at McDonalds.

There's a world of difference between "Kids today" and "computer
programmer." Forcing the 99.9% of kids who *won't* become computer
programmers to use a command line because of the .1% who will is like
forcing every kid to butcher a hog before they are allowed to eat bacon.

On Sun, Feb 26, 2012 at 12:14 PM, Richmond wrote:

>
>   Kids today don't need to know
>> what a command line is because the vast majority of them will never see
>> one
>> in their lives.
>>
>
> Really? I wonder about that. Surely every potential computer programmer
> should
> have some sort of understanding of command lines. This is rather like
> saying that
> that children brought up in cities should have no understanding that
> animals are slaughtered
> so that they can have meat on their plates, because they will never see a
> slaughter-house.
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Re: [OT] HyperCard and the Interactive Web

[Richmond]

On 02/26/2012 08:42 PM, Mark Wieder wrote:

Richmond-

Sunday, February 26, 2012, 10:14:47 AM, you wrote:


A slide-rule helps children (and adults!) visualise numbers and their
relations to one another;
a calculator does not.

As does an analog clock: there's a mathematical affinity that grows
out of visualizing the relationships between numbers that does not
lend itself to the display of digits on a computer screen or watch.
There is otherwise no cognitive difference between "five minutes to
ten" and "twenty minutes to ten".



Well said that man!

This why I start programming classes with beads/buttons and cups/dishes.

It is also why I often play with things on the carpet (LEGO, buttons, 
beads, string)

before, during and after programming.

While I am capable of abstract thought (and, at 50, it is becoming 
ever-more abstract),
I find, along with the 99.9% of people on the planet who are not 
screaming geniuses,

it very helpful indeed to have some sort of physical model to work with.

Try and explain a duckbilled platypus to someone who has not seen one or 
a photo of one;
try and do it without any reference whatsoever to any other life form 
(ducks, otters, etc.)

aand you will have a serious mental block.

Computers, lest we forget, just crunch numbers at the most basic level.

Programs just move data around; or, put it another way; they shift 
buttons between cups.




Years ago my Dad, who was not interested in computer programming (think 
1976) and thought
I was just going through a teenage phase, gave me a book on BASIC; it 
was utter crap because it
started off with words such as CONSTANT and VARIABLE, STRING and ARRAY; 
ugh; what were and

are those things?

Luckily for me, between a wonderful Maths teacher ('Bonehead' Barker) 
who could explain these words like this:-


CONSTANT;  a cup containing a fixed number of beads.

VARIABLE;  a cup that can have as many or as few beads as you want.

STRING; a cup with a letter/postcard from Granny stuffed inside it.

ARRAY; a tray holding a certain number of cups.

And another wonderful Maths teacher (David Exham) who could make models 
with cup and beads that made coherent sense and 'worked':


I got "it", or, perhaps, at the risk of making one of the worst puns of 
all time, I got "IT".


The only "bad" side to this is that I, now, have absolutely no problem 
visualising fairly abstract stuff as shifting beads around between cups.


Of course the chaps who wrote the "Easy Guide to BASIC" should have been 
taken out and set to clean toilets as they hadn't a clue about

how human brains conceptualise, nor about Reader Response Theory.

-

Later on, at my first University (Durham) I wrote a concordance program 
in PASCAL 5 that relied heavily on multi-dimensional arrays;
but as I wrote most of it in a notebook sitting amongst the stacks of 
the University library I had no real visualisation problem at all.


---

So; Yer, maybe we shoudl consider going "back to the future" in terms of 
how IT classes are laid out.


Richmond Mathewson.

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Re: [OT] HyperCard and the Interactive Web

[Mark Wieder]

Richmond-

Sunday, February 26, 2012, 10:14:47 AM, you wrote:

> A slide-rule helps children (and adults!) visualise numbers and their
> relations to one another;
> a calculator does not.

As does an analog clock: there's a mathematical affinity that grows
out of visualizing the relationships between numbers that does not
lend itself to the display of digits on a computer screen or watch.
There is otherwise no cognitive difference between "five minutes to
ten" and "twenty minutes to ten".

-- 
-Mark Wieder
 mwie...@ahsoftware.net


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Re: [OT] HyperCard and the Interactive Web

[Roger Eller]

On Sun, Feb 26, 2012 at 1:14 PM, Richmond wrote:

> On 02/26/2012 07:18 PM, Geoff Canyon wrote:
>
>> We're wandering a bit here, but I disagree completely, so of course I
>> should reply ;-)
>>
>
> I'm not sure whether we are wandering, as there is some sort of malaise
> among young people
> if they think that knowing how to create emoticons in Facebook constitutes
> IT.
>
>  ...  but when "push comes to shove" cannot do anything beyond typing
> essays in 'Office', f*rt around
> on Facebook, talk to each other with Skype, and muck around with Youtube,
> I find myself
>  troubled.


I hate to take sides, but the points Richmond has made, I believe to be
spot-on. Imagine if Steve Jobs (RIP) had been simply given a Mac, iPod,
iPhone, iPad when he was a child. Would he have worked to gain the basic
understanding of all the underlying parts and code that brings forth the
usefulness of those inventions?  I doubt it. Hardship is a foundation for
progress. Easy street is a foundation for arrogant elitism, or worse yet,
sheep.

~Roger
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Re: [OT] HyperCard and the Interactive Web

[Richmond]

On 02/26/2012 07:18 PM, Geoff Canyon wrote:

We're wandering a bit here, but I disagree completely, so of course I
should reply ;-)


I'm not sure whether we are wandering, as there is some sort of malaise 
among young people
if they think that knowing how to create emoticons in Facebook 
constitutes IT.


What does have to be hammered out, Geoff, is probably some position 
midway between yours and
mine. There is a general disquiet about the way "Computers and IT" 
courses have gone, and
it might not be a bad idea if those of us who are actually engaged in 
both programming and education

got involved in the dialogue.

As I have day-to-day contact with 7-15 year olds who use computers all 
the time, but understand
little or nothing about them, and yet talk "big" about how knowledgeable 
about them they are;
but when "push comes to shove" cannot do anything beyond typing essays 
in 'Office', f*rt around
on Facebook, talk to each other with Skype, and muck around with 
Youtube, I find myself

troubled.



Some 100 years ago, it was considered necessary to memorize log tables.
That skill is now useless.

I remember (near 50 here as well) learning how to derive a square root.


Wow; your education was even more conservative than mine . . .  :)


That skill is also useless.


Yes, those skills are useless; but a nodding acquaintance with the
underpinnings of mathematics, and, for the sake of argument, what
logarithms are and why they were used in the past is not useless.

Unless, like Henry Ford you feel a bit anti History.



I agree with you that "It is far more IMPORTANT that kids learn to think
logically and coherently," but that doesn't at all mean that they learn a
particular file structure, or machine UI.


Well, frankly, I do wonder how on earth a 12 year old can see his/her 
way through
a set of embedded if . . . end if / for . . . next loops (subroutines) 
if they have not been
taught any basic thinking skills. As, here in Bulgaria, "education" is 
99% fact-cramming,

the country is going to continue with its critical skills shortage for ever.


  Kids today don't need to know
what a command line is because the vast majority of them will never see one
in their lives.


Really? I wonder about that. Surely every potential computer programmer 
should
have some sort of understanding of command lines. This is rather like 
saying that
that children brought up in cities should have no understanding that 
animals are slaughtered
so that they can have meat on their plates, because they will never see 
a slaughter-house.


[Funnily enough, I took my 2 boys, when the older one was 6, down to the 
market in Al_Ain, UAE,
to see the goats and the cows having their throats cut, for exactly the 
same reason as I taught them

some simple command-line stuff on an old PC running FreeDOS].


  Kids should learn how to think, but in the context of the
environment they are/will operate in.


Which may change at any moment; so the more things they are exposed to 
the better

chance they have to adapt to whatever circumstances present themselves.


  A calculator is no more a crutch than
is an automobile.


A slide-rule helps children (and adults!) visualise numbers and their 
relations to one another;

a calculator does not.


  People who drive (or fly) from New York to Los Angeles
should not be first required to learn how to drive a horse and wagon across
the country.


No, of course they shouldn't because there is nothing to be learned 
about the underpinnings of how

cars or aeroplanes work from going by horse.

But using a GUI-less computer does help a child to understand the 
numerical underpinnings of

how computers work; a fact all to often obscured by WIMP-GUI eye-candy.

The WYSIWYG interface is all well and good; but you and I know full well 
that underneath all
the buttons, fields, images and what-have-you in the Livecode interface 
there are a bunch of scripts
that have been written in plain-vanilla code that have demanded quite a 
bit of boring slog and hard thinking;
and I, for one, would have found that one hell of a lot more difficult 
if I had been under the illusion that
Livecode was just some sort of drag-N-drop LEGO kit that would magically 
make programs to do all the extremely

fancy things that can be done.

One of the most disingenuous claims is that computer programming is 
easy; no it's not, and it takes a long
time to get one's head round things and to become good at it. While it 
is easy to make "powerpoint"

slideshows, it is not easy to do much more.



On Sun, Feb 26, 2012 at 2:15 AM, Richmondwrote:


Speaking as a reactionary 50 year old; I think:

1. No child under the age of 14 should be allowed any mathematical crutch
apart from a slide-rule.

  I find, in my "EFL" school, that kids find sliderules rather interesting,
and they are able to SEE how numbers
  work; something one cannot do with a pocket calculator.

2. At 14 children should all be given something like a Pentium 2 with
FreeDO

Re: [OT] HyperCard and the Interactive Web

[Geoff Canyon]

We're wandering a bit here, but I disagree completely, so of course I
should reply ;-)

Some 100 years ago, it was considered necessary to memorize log tables.
That skill is now useless.

I remember (near 50 here as well) learning how to derive a square root.
That skill is also useless.

I agree with you that "It is far more IMPORTANT that kids learn to think
logically and coherently," but that doesn't at all mean that they learn a
particular file structure, or machine UI. Kids today don't need to know
what a command line is because the vast majority of them will never see one
in their lives. Kids should learn how to think, but in the context of the
environment they are/will operate in. A calculator is no more a crutch than
is an automobile. People who drive (or fly) from New York to Los Angeles
should not be first required to learn how to drive a horse and wagon across
the country.

On Sun, Feb 26, 2012 at 2:15 AM, Richmond wrote:

> Speaking as a reactionary 50 year old; I think:
>
> 1. No child under the age of 14 should be allowed any mathematical crutch
> apart from a slide-rule.
>
>  I find, in my "EFL" school, that kids find sliderules rather interesting,
> and they are able to SEE how numbers
>  work; something one cannot do with a pocket calculator.
>
> 2. At 14 children should all be given something like a Pentium 2 with
> FreeDOS and taught
>how to navigate themselves around a system with no GUI.
>
> 3. At 14 children should be given a course in something like BASIC or LISP
> on that GUI-less computer.
>
> 3.1. Probably preceded by a few weeks "doing programming" on paper, and
> messing around with buttons in cups.
>
> 4. At 17-18 children should all be given a PC with an operating system
> with a WIMP-GUI on it after
>they have passed a test to demonstrate their familiarity with a
> Terminal emulator.
>
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Re: [OT] HyperCard and the Interactive Web

[Richmond]

Come to think of things:

Plonking a kid down in front of a computer that has NO programs on it, just
RunRev/Livecode and showing her/him that, very quickly indeed, s/he can get
quite a long way with getting the machine to do what one wants, is 
pretty good.


I do this every summer; lots of cast-off Pentium 3's running Ubuntu 5.10 
with

RunRev/Livecode 2.2.1, GIMP and a text editor. I have hacked the system
menus so NOTHING else is available at all.

We start with groans and end, after the predictable 90 minutes of 
struggle, with smiles.


All of you that have kids in the 7-12 range should try it; go to the 
garage/attic/cupboard
an fish out that old, past-it PC; install an old OS on it with GNOME 2 
or XFCE,
and tell the kids something vaguely threatening such as "no ice-cream 
until . . . ".


In fact, I find it amazingly useful, as I have to force myself back into 
a way of thinking

about programming that I have largely forgotten.

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Re: [OT] HyperCard and the Interactive Web

[Richmond]

On 02/26/2012 06:48 AM, Judy Perry wrote:

O_o

Judy

On Wed, 15 Feb 2012, Lynn Fredricks wrote:


I think you should also not underestimate the value of a predictive (and
more advanced AI) system that allows other interfaces to be more 
simplified.
So many lessons were learned starting from the lean restrictions of 
the PDA

era. More and more complex tasks will be able to be broken down to three
steps or less.




When I was 10 I worked on Saturdays at the print-shop of Wellington 
College, where my father taught,
earning the princely sum of 2 shillings a week (10p); and after some 5 
weeks was able to buy a set of books
about cars, trains, ships and aeroplanes. I still have those books; and, 
emotionally, they mean more to me than
any books that people have given me, because they represent hours 
cursing over an offset-litho machine,

and hours of blanket wash.

Things should be made slightly harder, not easier, for children; 
otherwise we will end up with a race like

those ones who were cannibalised in H.G. Wells' "Time Machine".

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Re: [OT] HyperCard and the Interactive Web

[Richmond]

On 02/26/2012 06:42 AM, Judy Perry wrote:
You are correct; they have NO IDEA how their file system works.  I'm 
lucky if they can even recall what they named a file, and they pay 
ZERO attention to file formats.  One couldn't grasp the concept of 
overwriting a file.  Sigh.


Judy

On Tue, 14 Feb 2012, Peter Bogdanoff wrote:

When I started working at UCLA in 1996 very few students had used 
computers before entering, or at least had used their own computers 
rather than a lab one in grade school. Now 15 years later all have a 
laptop in class. However, about 3/4 of the Mac-using students in a 
music history class use Spotlight to find files and open applications 
on their Macs and most of these don't know any other way to find 
their files. In other words, they don't really have a clue how the 
file system works. I only started to discover this when I had them 
install a project that I'm developing and found out that many have 
been running it from their Downloads folder and didn't know to do it 
any other way.


Would you call these people computer-literate? They sure are Web and 
social media literate. So the sooner OS X moves to an iOS-type Finder 
the better for them. It could be that OS X is just too easy to use 
and so they never learn more than Word, Google, YouTube, and 
Facebook. The Windows users seem to know a little more, at least 
their own version of Samsung Windows or Dell Windows, but it's only a 
little more.


Peter Bogdanoff
UCLA




Speaking as a reactionary 50 year old; I think:

1. No child under the age of 14 should be allowed any mathematical 
crutch apart from a slide-rule.


  I find, in my "EFL" school, that kids find sliderules rather 
interesting, and they are able to SEE how numbers

  work; something one cannot do with a pocket calculator.

2. At 14 children should all be given something like a Pentium 2 with 
FreeDOS and taught

how to navigate themselves around a system with no GUI.

3. At 14 children should be given a course in something like BASIC or 
LISP on that GUI-less computer.


3.1. Probably preceded by a few weeks "doing programming" on paper, and 
messing around with buttons in cups.


4. At 17-18 children should all be given a PC with an operating system 
with a WIMP-GUI on it after
they have passed a test to demonstrate their familiarity with a 
Terminal emulator.


It is far more IMPORTANT that kids learn to think logically and 
coherently than possess fancy electronic

equipment.



Why the hell most parents want to CRIPPLE their kids by lobbing them a 
fancy laptop and/or hand-held at about

the same time they are toilet trained escapes me.

Richmond.

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RE: [OT] HyperCard and the Interactive Web

[Judy Perry]

O_o

Judy

On Wed, 15 Feb 2012, Lynn Fredricks wrote:


I think you should also not underestimate the value of a predictive (and
more advanced AI) system that allows other interfaces to be more simplified.
So many lessons were learned starting from the lean restrictions of the PDA
era. More and more complex tasks will be able to be broken down to three
steps or less.


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Re: [OT] HyperCard and the Interactive Web

[Judy Perry]

You are correct; they have NO IDEA how their file system works.  I'm lucky 
if they can even recall what they named a file, and they pay ZERO 
attention to file formats.  One couldn't grasp the concept of overwriting 
a file.  Sigh.


Judy

On Tue, 14 Feb 2012, Peter Bogdanoff wrote:


When I started working at UCLA in 1996 very few students had used computers 
before entering, or at least had used their own computers rather than a lab one 
in grade school. Now 15 years later all have a laptop in class. However, about 
3/4 of the Mac-using students in a music history class use Spotlight to find 
files and open applications on their Macs and most of these don't know any 
other way to find their files. In other words, they don't really have a clue 
how the file system works. I only started to discover this when I had them 
install a project that I'm developing and found out that many have been running 
it from their Downloads folder and didn't know to do it any other way.

Would you call these people computer-literate? They sure are Web and social 
media literate. So the sooner OS X moves to an iOS-type Finder the better for 
them. It could be that OS X is just too easy to use and so they never learn 
more than Word, Google, YouTube, and Facebook. The Windows users seem to know a 
little more, at least their own version of Samsung Windows or Dell Windows, but 
it's only a little more.

Peter Bogdanoff
UCLA


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Re: [OT] HyperCard and the Interactive Web

[Kay C Lan]

Hmmm, sounds like the exact same excuse I give my wife ;-)

On Tue, Feb 21, 2012 at 2:16 AM, Richmond wrote:

> On 02/20/2012 07:18 AM, Kay C Lan wrote:
>
>> On Mon, Feb 20, 2012 at 1:12 AM, 
>> Richmond
>> >wrote:
>>
>>  I wouldn't worry about that. In our flat one cannot see the living-room
>>> walls (in some places 3 books deep).
>>>
>>> You've seen the TV series Hoarders I presume
>>>
>>
> All my books (and my wife's, and my sons') have emotional attachments; and
> some of them,
> such as the one printed in 1615, are deeply entrenched in our family
> history.
>
> Rather like my collection of antiquated computers enjoying a quiet,
> secluded retirement in our house in Scotland . . .  :)
>
>
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Re: [OT] HyperCard and the Interactive Web

[Richmond]

On 02/20/2012 07:18 AM, Kay C Lan wrote:

On Mon, Feb 20, 2012 at 1:12 AM, Richmondwrote:


I wouldn't worry about that. In our flat one cannot see the living-room
walls (in some places 3 books deep).

You've seen the TV series Hoarders I presume


All my books (and my wife's, and my sons') have emotional attachments; 
and some of them,
such as the one printed in 1615, are deeply entrenched in our family 
history.


Rather like my collection of antiquated computers enjoying a quiet, 
secluded retirement in our house in Scotland . . .  :)



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Re: [OT] HyperCard and the Interactive Web

[Kay C Lan]

On Mon, Feb 20, 2012 at 1:12 AM, Richmond wrote:

> I wouldn't worry about that. In our flat one cannot see the living-room
> walls (in some places 3 books deep).
>
> You've seen the TV series Hoarders I presume
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Re: [OT] HyperCard and the Interactive Web

[Richmond]

On 02/19/2012 05:24 PM, Bernard Devlin wrote:

I saw one version where they built a robot arm (using LEGO, I think)
to turn the pages.  The process had thereby been completely automated.

I also understand there is a Japanese company that does such scanning
(and reasonably priced).  Last time I looked, they had a backlog of
months.

I feel I am still caught in the past, as in so many ways I still
prefer physical books.  It's clear that my interest in books is
something of a notoriety in the neighbourhood, as I found out that
people used my house as a reference point ("turn left at the
library").  I was kind of embarrassed when I heard that.

Bernard


I wouldn't worry about that. In our flat one cannot see the living-room 
walls (in some places 3 books deep).


Far more worrying, to my mind, are those who never read at all.



On Sun, Feb 19, 2012 at 7:43 AM, Richmond  wrote:

Really fascinating stuff..now how can I find the free time?

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Re: [OT] HyperCard and the Interactive Web

[Bernard Devlin]

I saw one version where they built a robot arm (using LEGO, I think)
to turn the pages.  The process had thereby been completely automated.

I also understand there is a Japanese company that does such scanning
(and reasonably priced).  Last time I looked, they had a backlog of
months.

I feel I am still caught in the past, as in so many ways I still
prefer physical books.  It's clear that my interest in books is
something of a notoriety in the neighbourhood, as I found out that
people used my house as a reference point ("turn left at the
library").  I was kind of embarrassed when I heard that.

Bernard

On Sun, Feb 19, 2012 at 7:43 AM, Richmond  wrote:
> Really fascinating stuff..now how can I find the free time?

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Re: [OT] HyperCard and the Interactive Web

[Richmond]

On 02/19/2012 06:53 AM, Geoff Canyon Rev wrote:

http://www.diybookscanner.org/

1000 pages per hour, and as gentle as you can turn the pages.


Really fascinating stuff..now how can I find the free time?



On Wed, Feb 15, 2012 at 11:18 AM, Bob Sneidar  wrote:


Someone needs to make a machine something like a cat scanner but that can
take a 3D image of an entire book so that the pages can be singled out and
OCR applied to them without damaging the book. Then we could get on much
better! :-)

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Re: [OT] HyperCard and the Interactive Web

[Geoff Canyon Rev]

http://www.diybookscanner.org/

1000 pages per hour, and as gentle as you can turn the pages.

On Wed, Feb 15, 2012 at 11:18 AM, Bob Sneidar  wrote:

> Someone needs to make a machine something like a cat scanner but that can
> take a 3D image of an entire book so that the pages can be singled out and
> OCR applied to them without damaging the book. Then we could get on much
> better! :-)
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Re: [OT] HyperCard and the Interactive Web

[Alejandro Tejada]

Hi Bob,


slylabs13 wrote
> 
> I think back then there was such a distain for anything Macintosh in the
> PC world, that anyone faced with the decision about whether or not to
> include in a history of computing, Hypercard as a precursor to ALL
> Hypertext based systems would be inclined to decline. It's the old adage
> that the winners write the history books, and PC people of that ilk see
> themselves as "the winners" by sheer numbers. Macintoshes were not
> considered "serious business computers" back then, but were characterized
> as mere consumer toys. Just my guess tho'. 
> 

Well, I recognize that I never have though about this topic in this way,
because myself started as a Mac user and later become a Windows user.
I do not see any existential conflict about this...

Strangely enough, HyperCard was an inspiration too for Visual Basic too:
http://www.mackido.com/History/History_VB.html
http://loewald.com/blog/?p=3494

Have a nice weekend!

Al

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Re: [OT] HyperCard and the Interactive Web

[Richmond]

On 02/16/2012 08:23 PM, Graham Samuel wrote:

You didn't ask what a cloud of unknowing is… there is an interesting answer.


Years ago, in the USA, I watched a film called "The Never Ending Story", 
based on a book by Michael Ende,

and it has had a permanent affect on my brain . . .  :)



Graham

On Wed, 15 Feb 2012 14:40:34 -0800, Bob Sneidar  wrote:

What is Linux?? And what is "miasmic"? ;-)

Bob


On Feb 15, 2012, at 12:33 PM, Richmond wrote:


Having said that; this criticism comes from "my own" 'University' of Abertay 
where, on the MSc course I attended, we had 3 weeks of lectures
on Excel. And, having been told the course was about computers and computer 
programming, none of the lecturers seemed to have heard of Linux: probably as 
the result of a miasmic cloud of unknowing spreading out from the 'Microsoft 
Professor' there.

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Re: [OT] HyperCard and the Interactive Web

[Richmond]

On 02/16/2012 04:21 AM, J. Landman Gay wrote:

On 2/15/12 7:53 PM, Mark Wieder wrote:

Lynn-

Wednesday, February 15, 2012, 4:28:58 PM, you wrote:


More and more complex tasks will be able to be broken down to three
steps or less.


1. Take it out of the refrigerator.
2. Sniff.
3. Toss it.


This list is almost
Too close to haiku to be
Too comfortable.


That's why
I'm writing this
short riposte.

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Re: [OT] HyperCard and the Interactive Web

[Richmond]

On 02/16/2012 12:40 AM, Bob Sneidar wrote:

What is Linux?? And what is "miasmic"? ;-)


One thing I am sure of; is that Linux is not miasmic. Beyond that, dunno!



Bob


On Feb 15, 2012, at 12:33 PM, Richmond wrote:


Having said that; this criticism comes from "my own" 'University' of Abertay 
where, on the MSc course I attended, we had 3 weeks of lectures
on Excel. And, having been told the course was about computers and computer 
programming, none of the lecturers seemed to have heard of Linux: probably as 
the result of a miasmic cloud of unknowing spreading out from the 'Microsoft 
Professor' there.


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Re: [OT] HyperCard and the Interactive Web

[Graham Samuel]

You didn't ask what a cloud of unknowing is… there is an interesting answer.

Graham

On Wed, 15 Feb 2012 14:40:34 -0800, Bob Sneidar  wrote:
> 
> What is Linux?? And what is "miasmic"? ;-)
> 
> Bob
> 
> 
> On Feb 15, 2012, at 12:33 PM, Richmond wrote:
> 
>> Having said that; this criticism comes from "my own" 'University' of Abertay 
>> where, on the MSc course I attended, we had 3 weeks of lectures
>> on Excel. And, having been told the course was about computers and computer 
>> programming, none of the lecturers seemed to have heard of Linux: probably 
>> as the result of a miasmic cloud of unknowing spreading out from the 
>> 'Microsoft Professor' there.

> 
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Re: [OT] HyperCard and the Interactive Web

[J. Landman Gay]

On 2/15/12 7:53 PM, Mark Wieder wrote:

Lynn-

Wednesday, February 15, 2012, 4:28:58 PM, you wrote:


More and more complex tasks will be able to be broken down to three
steps or less.


1. Take it out of the refrigerator.
2. Sniff.
3. Toss it.


This list is almost
Too close to haiku to be
Too comfortable.

--
Jacqueline Landman Gay | jac...@hyperactivesw.com
HyperActive Software   | http://www.hyperactivesw.com

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Re: [OT] HyperCard and the Interactive Web

[Mark Wieder]

Lynn-

Wednesday, February 15, 2012, 4:28:58 PM, you wrote:

> More and more complex tasks will be able to be broken down to three
> steps or less.

1. Take it out of the refrigerator.
2. Sniff.
3. Toss it.



-- 
-Mark Wieder
 mwie...@ahsoftware.net


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RE: [OT] HyperCard and the Interactive Web

[Lynn Fredricks]

> I do think this underscores a principle I have been stating 
> for years, that advancements in technology (at least consumer 
> technology) cannot continue to increase linearly forever. A 
> good friend of mine contends that it can! But I argue that 
> you soon reach a point where the average user simply refuses 
> the technology on the grounds that it is too much mental work 
> to embrace it. The genius of iOS is that it was written as 
> the OS for the rest of the rest of us. ;-) 

I think you should also not underestimate the value of a predictive (and
more advanced AI) system that allows other interfaces to be more simplified.
So many lessons were learned starting from the lean restrictions of the PDA
era. More and more complex tasks will be able to be broken down to three
steps or less.

Best regards,

Lynn Fredricks
President
Paradigma Software
http://www.paradigmasoft.com

Valentina SQL Server: The Ultra-fast, Royalty Free Database Server 



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Re: [OT] HyperCard and the Interactive Web

[Bob Sneidar]

What is Linux?? And what is "miasmic"? ;-)

Bob


On Feb 15, 2012, at 12:33 PM, Richmond wrote:

> Having said that; this criticism comes from "my own" 'University' of Abertay 
> where, on the MSc course I attended, we had 3 weeks of lectures
> on Excel. And, having been told the course was about computers and computer 
> programming, none of the lecturers seemed to have heard of Linux: probably as 
> the result of a miasmic cloud of unknowing spreading out from the 'Microsoft 
> Professor' there.


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Re: [OT] HyperCard and the Interactive Web

[Richmond]

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ee58426a-df9a-11e0-845a-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1mU0BdboP

"High quality global journalism requires investment. Please share this 
article with others using the link below, do not cut & paste the 
article. See our Ts&Cs  and 
Copyright Policy  for 
more detail. Email ftsales.supp...@ft.com 
 to buy additional rights. 
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ee58426a-df9a-11e0-845a-00144feabdc0.html#ixzz1mU3h024O


Mr Willetts said he accepted Mr Schmidt's widely publicised remarks that 
"your IT curriculum focuses on how to use software but gives no insight 
into how it's made. That is just throwing away your great computing 
heritage.""


Spot on..

--faintly tedious anecdote follows-

This morning, on my non-teaching day, I got a Facebook call from on of 
the 15 year olds I teach, from her "IT" class.


I asked her what she was doing when they were having an IT class; she 
told me that the teacher was "rabbiting on about Word"
(well, at least I could feel happy that her English was good enough to 
use 'rabbiting') and all the kids were chatting on Facebook,

and, anyway, the teacher didn't care.

She asked me what I would do under similar circumstances; to which I 
replied that I would chat to my friends on Facebook
as how to format a paragraph in 'Word' does not constitute 'IT', and 
that the teacher should know better. She pointed out to me

that that is what the course outline for the year largely consisted of.

--end of faintly tedious anecdote stops here; but you may regret not 
having read it as what follows may appear decontextualised as a result--


This does not happen only in Bulgaria

http://www.silicon.com/management/cio-insights/2008/06/17/boring-school-it-curriculum-slammed-39247688/

"called for a radical overhauling of the curriculum in secondary schools 
as "boring" ICT classes which focus on Word and Excel are turning 
teenagers off IT as a career. "


Which cretins (and by 'cretins' I mean CRETINS) arrived at the idea that 
IT consisted of typing in a word-processor or

mucking around with a spreadsheet?

--bitchy, personal bit follows---

Having said that; this criticism comes from "my own" 'University' of 
Abertay where, on the MSc course I attended, we had 3 weeks of lectures
on Excel. And, having been told the course was about computers and 
computer programming, none of the lecturers seemed to have heard of 
Linux: probably as the result of a miasmic cloud of unknowing spreading 
out from the 'Microsoft Professor' there.


--smack yourself for having skipped the difficult bits--

Richmond.

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Re: [OT] HyperCard and the Interactive Web

[Bob Sneidar]

Someone needs to make a machine something like a cat scanner but that can take 
a 3D image of an entire book so that the pages can be singled out and OCR 
applied to them without damaging the book. Then we could get on much better! :-)

Bob


On Feb 15, 2012, at 7:35 AM, Bernard Devlin wrote:

> Alas, I think it is not a new phenomenon.
> 
> I am not young enough to know everything.
> -- Oscar Wilde
> 
> Whenever I walk into a large library, I feel a sense of awe in the
> physical presence of so much that I do not know, and will never know.
> Being able to click between Facebook, Google and Wikipedia is unlikely
> to instill a sense of the vastness of knowledge and the limited
> lifespan we have.  Reading about advanced ancient civilizations also
> makes me wonder at how much we have lost in terms of knowledge.
> 
> The internet is great as an instant encyclopaedia (even given the
> partiality of much of the information).  What it lacks is depth and a
> scale by which to realise one's ignorance.  Getting an overview of a
> subject on the internet, then going to a real library to read around
> it makes me appreciate the physical library even more.
> 
> But I'm not knocking the digitisation of information - I would hate to
> have to physically search through a stack of old copies of the New
> York Times going back through the last century.
> 
> There are some obscure books printed in India in the 1930s that I want
> to look up soon.  I've found physical copies, but I have no hope they
> will ever be digitised.  And that makes me wonder about what knowledge
> we will lose about our own past.
> 
> Bernard
> 
> On Tue, Feb 14, 2012 at 8:44 PM, Bob Sneidar  wrote:
>> It is frightening to think that so many "kids" grow up to be adults and 
>> NEVER form the thought, "Maybe I don't know all about...". What positions do 
>> they eventually come to hold where doing the wrong thing means damage, pain 
>> and suffering and even death to themselves or others?
> 
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Re: [OT] HyperCard and the Interactive Web

[Bob Sneidar]

I have to disagree. You are saying, it seems, that we have to dumb down the OS 
for everyone in order to accommodate those unable or unwilling to learn as much 
as they need to use it. I for one, cringe at the prospect of an OS that limited 
what I could do or how I could do it. 

I do think this underscores a principle I have been stating for years, that 
advancements in technology (at least consumer technology) cannot continue to 
increase linearly forever. A good friend of mine contends that it can! But I 
argue that you soon reach a point where the average user simply refuses the 
technology on the grounds that it is too much mental work to embrace it. The 
genius of iOS is that it was written as the OS for the rest of the rest of us. 
;-) 

One more point. If we want to advance technology in the consumer world, we are 
going to have to first make great advancements in the educational world, and I 
have been watching a marked trend in the opposite direction for most of my 56 
years on this planet. 

Bob


On Feb 14, 2012, at 10:06 PM, Peter Bogdanoff wrote:

> When I started working at UCLA in 1996 very few students had used computers 
> before entering, or at least had used their own computers rather than a lab 
> one in grade school. Now 15 years later all have a laptop in class. However, 
> about 3/4 of the Mac-using students in a music history class use Spotlight to 
> find files and open applications on their Macs and most of these don't know 
> any other way to find their files. In other words, they don't really have a 
> clue how the file system works. I only started to discover this when I had 
> them install a project that I'm developing and found out that many have been 
> running it from their Downloads folder and didn't know to do it any other way.
> 
> Would you call these people computer-literate? They sure are Web and social 
> media literate. So the sooner OS X moves to an iOS-type Finder the better for 
> them. It could be that OS X is just too easy to use and so they never learn 
> more than Word, Google, YouTube, and Facebook. The Windows users seem to know 
> a little more, at least their own version of Samsung Windows or Dell Windows, 
> but it's only a little more.
> 
> Peter Bogdanoff
> UCLA
> 
> On Feb 14, 2012, at 12:44 PM, Bob Sneidar wrote:
> 
>> It is frightening to think that so many "kids" grow up to be adults and 
>> NEVER form the thought, "Maybe I don't know all about...". What positions do 
>> they eventually come to hold where doing the wrong thing means damage, pain 
>> and suffering and even death to themselves or others? 
>> 
>> Maybe what we ought to be impressing constantly on children is the 
>> incredible amount of knowledge they do NOT know? Maybe on the first day of 
>> computer class we should be overwhelming them with information that is WAAAY 
>> over their heads, and tell them that the following morning there will be a 
>> quiz on it. Then next morning tell them there is no quiz, but you do not 
>> ever want to hear the phrase, "I know all about..."
>> 
>> Bob
>> 
>> 
>> On Feb 14, 2012, at 11:41 AM, Richmond wrote:
>> 
>>> Certainly no flies on you!
>>> 
>>> Far more important, to my mind, is the fact that kids nowadays keep telling 
>>> me they "know all
>>> about computers". Then I turn on the computers in the school and they ask 
>>> me where Windows
>>> Explorer is, and when I explain that these computers work with something 
>>> called Linux they say
>>> "but everybody knows that computers cannot work without Windows".
>>> 
>>> I wonder how many operating systems there are, apart from Windows, 
>>> currently available to
>>> run bog-basic PCs?
>> 
>> 
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Re: [OT] HyperCard and the Interactive Web

[Bernard Devlin]

Alas, I think it is not a new phenomenon.

I am not young enough to know everything.
-- Oscar Wilde

Whenever I walk into a large library, I feel a sense of awe in the
physical presence of so much that I do not know, and will never know.
Being able to click between Facebook, Google and Wikipedia is unlikely
to instill a sense of the vastness of knowledge and the limited
lifespan we have.  Reading about advanced ancient civilizations also
makes me wonder at how much we have lost in terms of knowledge.

The internet is great as an instant encyclopaedia (even given the
partiality of much of the information).  What it lacks is depth and a
scale by which to realise one's ignorance.  Getting an overview of a
subject on the internet, then going to a real library to read around
it makes me appreciate the physical library even more.

But I'm not knocking the digitisation of information - I would hate to
have to physically search through a stack of old copies of the New
York Times going back through the last century.

There are some obscure books printed in India in the 1930s that I want
to look up soon.  I've found physical copies, but I have no hope they
will ever be digitised.  And that makes me wonder about what knowledge
we will lose about our own past.

Bernard

On Tue, Feb 14, 2012 at 8:44 PM, Bob Sneidar  wrote:
> It is frightening to think that so many "kids" grow up to be adults and NEVER 
> form the thought, "Maybe I don't know all about...". What positions do they 
> eventually come to hold where doing the wrong thing means damage, pain and 
> suffering and even death to themselves or others?

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Re: [OT] HyperCard and the Interactive Web

[stephen barncard]

I still want my "Save As.." menu item back. There seems to be some aspects
of Lion that assume I'm an idiot and might do something wrong.

On 14 February 2012 22:52, Joe Lewis Wilkins  wrote:

> Peter,
>
> Great observations; so we have even more than just generation gaps with
> which to deal. I'm sure Richmond will have a lot more to add to this from
> his experiences with children in his part of the world. Personally, I'm
> getting way behind these days by not using anything but desktop Macs. I'm
> waiting for the first computer that we can control telepathically; or that
> plugs into my sinus cavities and uses my bones for data storage.
>
> Joe Wilkins
>
>
> On Feb 14, 2012, at 10:06 PM, Peter Bogdanoff wrote:
>
> > When I started working at UCLA in 1996 very few students had used
> computers before entering, or at least had used their own computers rather
> than a lab one in grade school. Now 15 years later all have a laptop in
> class. However, about 3/4 of the Mac-using students in a music history
> class use Spotlight to find files and open applications on their Macs and
> most of these don't know any other way to find their files. In other words,
> they don't really have a clue how the file system works. I only started to
> discover this when I had them install a project that I'm developing and
> found out that many have been running it from their Downloads folder and
> didn't know to do it any other way.
> >
> > Would you call these people computer-literate? They sure are Web and
> social media literate. So the sooner OS X moves to an iOS-type Finder the
> better for them. It could be that OS X is just too easy to use and so they
> never learn more than Word, Google, YouTube, and Facebook. The Windows
> users seem to know a little more, at least their own version of Samsung
> Windows or Dell Windows, but it's only a little more.
> >
> > Peter Bogdanoff
> > UCLA
> >
> > On Feb 14, 2012, at 12:44 PM, Bob Sneidar wrote:
> >
> >> It is frightening to think that so many "kids" grow up to be adults and
> NEVER form the thought, "Maybe I don't know all about...". What positions
> do they eventually come to hold where doing the wrong thing means damage,
> pain and suffering and even death to themselves or others?
> >>
> >> Maybe what we ought to be impressing constantly on children is the
> incredible amount of knowledge they do NOT know? Maybe on the first day of
> computer class we should be overwhelming them with information that is
> WAAAY over their heads, and tell them that the following morning there will
> be a quiz on it. Then next morning tell them there is no quiz, but you do
> not ever want to hear the phrase, "I know all about..."
> >>
> >> Bob
> >>
> >>
> >> On Feb 14, 2012, at 11:41 AM, Richmond wrote:
> >>
> >>> Certainly no flies on you!
> >>>
> >>> Far more important, to my mind, is the fact that kids nowadays keep
> telling me they "know all
> >>> about computers". Then I turn on the computers in the school and they
> ask me where Windows
> >>> Explorer is, and when I explain that these computers work with
> something called Linux they say
> >>> "but everybody knows that computers cannot work without Windows".
> >>>
> >>> I wonder how many operating systems there are, apart from Windows,
> currently available to
> >>> run bog-basic PCs?
> >>
> >>
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-- 



Stephen Barncard
San Francisco Ca. USA

more about sqb  
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Re: [OT] HyperCard and the Interactive Web

[Joe Lewis Wilkins]

Peter,

Great observations; so we have even more than just generation gaps with which 
to deal. I'm sure Richmond will have a lot more to add to this from his 
experiences with children in his part of the world. Personally, I'm getting way 
behind these days by not using anything but desktop Macs. I'm waiting for the 
first computer that we can control telepathically; or that plugs into my sinus 
cavities and uses my bones for data storage.

Joe Wilkins


On Feb 14, 2012, at 10:06 PM, Peter Bogdanoff wrote:

> When I started working at UCLA in 1996 very few students had used computers 
> before entering, or at least had used their own computers rather than a lab 
> one in grade school. Now 15 years later all have a laptop in class. However, 
> about 3/4 of the Mac-using students in a music history class use Spotlight to 
> find files and open applications on their Macs and most of these don't know 
> any other way to find their files. In other words, they don't really have a 
> clue how the file system works. I only started to discover this when I had 
> them install a project that I'm developing and found out that many have been 
> running it from their Downloads folder and didn't know to do it any other way.
> 
> Would you call these people computer-literate? They sure are Web and social 
> media literate. So the sooner OS X moves to an iOS-type Finder the better for 
> them. It could be that OS X is just too easy to use and so they never learn 
> more than Word, Google, YouTube, and Facebook. The Windows users seem to know 
> a little more, at least their own version of Samsung Windows or Dell Windows, 
> but it's only a little more.
> 
> Peter Bogdanoff
> UCLA
> 
> On Feb 14, 2012, at 12:44 PM, Bob Sneidar wrote:
> 
>> It is frightening to think that so many "kids" grow up to be adults and 
>> NEVER form the thought, "Maybe I don't know all about...". What positions do 
>> they eventually come to hold where doing the wrong thing means damage, pain 
>> and suffering and even death to themselves or others? 
>> 
>> Maybe what we ought to be impressing constantly on children is the 
>> incredible amount of knowledge they do NOT know? Maybe on the first day of 
>> computer class we should be overwhelming them with information that is WAAAY 
>> over their heads, and tell them that the following morning there will be a 
>> quiz on it. Then next morning tell them there is no quiz, but you do not 
>> ever want to hear the phrase, "I know all about..."
>> 
>> Bob
>> 
>> 
>> On Feb 14, 2012, at 11:41 AM, Richmond wrote:
>> 
>>> Certainly no flies on you!
>>> 
>>> Far more important, to my mind, is the fact that kids nowadays keep telling 
>>> me they "know all
>>> about computers". Then I turn on the computers in the school and they ask 
>>> me where Windows
>>> Explorer is, and when I explain that these computers work with something 
>>> called Linux they say
>>> "but everybody knows that computers cannot work without Windows".
>>> 
>>> I wonder how many operating systems there are, apart from Windows, 
>>> currently available to
>>> run bog-basic PCs?
>> 
>> 
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Re: [OT] HyperCard and the Interactive Web

[Peter Bogdanoff]

When I started working at UCLA in 1996 very few students had used computers 
before entering, or at least had used their own computers rather than a lab one 
in grade school. Now 15 years later all have a laptop in class. However, about 
3/4 of the Mac-using students in a music history class use Spotlight to find 
files and open applications on their Macs and most of these don't know any 
other way to find their files. In other words, they don't really have a clue 
how the file system works. I only started to discover this when I had them 
install a project that I'm developing and found out that many have been running 
it from their Downloads folder and didn't know to do it any other way.

Would you call these people computer-literate? They sure are Web and social 
media literate. So the sooner OS X moves to an iOS-type Finder the better for 
them. It could be that OS X is just too easy to use and so they never learn 
more than Word, Google, YouTube, and Facebook. The Windows users seem to know a 
little more, at least their own version of Samsung Windows or Dell Windows, but 
it's only a little more.

Peter Bogdanoff
UCLA

On Feb 14, 2012, at 12:44 PM, Bob Sneidar wrote:

> It is frightening to think that so many "kids" grow up to be adults and NEVER 
> form the thought, "Maybe I don't know all about...". What positions do they 
> eventually come to hold where doing the wrong thing means damage, pain and 
> suffering and even death to themselves or others? 
> 
> Maybe what we ought to be impressing constantly on children is the incredible 
> amount of knowledge they do NOT know? Maybe on the first day of computer 
> class we should be overwhelming them with information that is WAAAY over 
> their heads, and tell them that the following morning there will be a quiz on 
> it. Then next morning tell them there is no quiz, but you do not ever want to 
> hear the phrase, "I know all about..."
> 
> Bob
> 
> 
> On Feb 14, 2012, at 11:41 AM, Richmond wrote:
> 
>> Certainly no flies on you!
>> 
>> Far more important, to my mind, is the fact that kids nowadays keep telling 
>> me they "know all
>> about computers". Then I turn on the computers in the school and they ask me 
>> where Windows
>> Explorer is, and when I explain that these computers work with something 
>> called Linux they say
>> "but everybody knows that computers cannot work without Windows".
>> 
>> I wonder how many operating systems there are, apart from Windows, currently 
>> available to
>> run bog-basic PCs?
> 
> 
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Re: [OT] HyperCard and the Interactive Web

[Bob Sneidar]

It is frightening to think that so many "kids" grow up to be adults and NEVER 
form the thought, "Maybe I don't know all about...". What positions do they 
eventually come to hold where doing the wrong thing means damage, pain and 
suffering and even death to themselves or others? 

Maybe what we ought to be impressing constantly on children is the incredible 
amount of knowledge they do NOT know? Maybe on the first day of computer class 
we should be overwhelming them with information that is WAAAY over their heads, 
and tell them that the following morning there will be a quiz on it. Then next 
morning tell them there is no quiz, but you do not ever want to hear the 
phrase, "I know all about..."

Bob


On Feb 14, 2012, at 11:41 AM, Richmond wrote:

> Certainly no flies on you!
> 
> Far more important, to my mind, is the fact that kids nowadays keep telling 
> me they "know all
> about computers". Then I turn on the computers in the school and they ask me 
> where Windows
> Explorer is, and when I explain that these computers work with something 
> called Linux they say
> "but everybody knows that computers cannot work without Windows".
> 
> I wonder how many operating systems there are, apart from Windows, currently 
> available to
> run bog-basic PCs?


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Re: [OT] HyperCard and the Interactive Web

[Richmond]

On 02/14/2012 09:50 PM, stephen barncard wrote:

will MS-Dos still run?




I have a Pentium 2 with 32 MB RAM that I recently reinstalled FreeDOS 
with the GEM GUI on.


Runs really very nicely indeed, if DOS is your "Bag".

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Re: [OT] HyperCard and the Interactive Web

[stephen barncard]

will MS-Dos still run?

On 14 February 2012 11:41, Richmond  wrote:

> On 02/14/2012 07:06 AM, Judy Perry wrote:
>
>> On Sat, 11 Feb 2012, Richmond wrote:
>>
>>  And how many people realise that Ada Lovelace was the Mother of them all.
>>>
>>
>> And the daughter of Lord Byron...
>>
>
> Certainly no flies on you!
>
> Far more important, to my mind, is the fact that kids nowadays keep
> telling me they "know all
> about computers". Then I turn on the computers in the school and they ask
> me where Windows
> Explorer is, and when I explain that these computers work with something
> called Linux they say
> "but everybody knows that computers cannot work without Windows".
>
> I wonder how many operating systems there are, apart from Windows,
> currently available to
> run bog-basic PCs?
>
>
>
>> Judy
>>
>> __**_
>> use-livecode mailing list
>> use-livecode@lists.runrev.com
>> Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your
>> subscription preferences:
>> http://lists.runrev.com/**mailman/listinfo/use-livecode
>>
>
>
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> use-livecode@lists.runrev.com
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> subscription preferences:
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>



-- 



Stephen Barncard
San Francisco Ca. USA

more about sqb  
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Re: [OT] HyperCard and the Interactive Web

[Richmond]

On 02/14/2012 07:06 AM, Judy Perry wrote:

On Sat, 11 Feb 2012, Richmond wrote:

And how many people realise that Ada Lovelace was the Mother of them 
all.


And the daughter of Lord Byron...


Certainly no flies on you!

Far more important, to my mind, is the fact that kids nowadays keep 
telling me they "know all
about computers". Then I turn on the computers in the school and they 
ask me where Windows
Explorer is, and when I explain that these computers work with something 
called Linux they say

"but everybody knows that computers cannot work without Windows".

I wonder how many operating systems there are, apart from Windows, 
currently available to

run bog-basic PCs?



Judy

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Re: [OT] HyperCard and the Interactive Web

[Judy Perry]

On Sat, 11 Feb 2012, Richmond wrote:

And how many people realise that Ada Lovelace was the Mother of them 
all.


And the daughter of Lord Byron...

Judy

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Re: [OT] HyperCard and the Interactive Web

[Judy Perry]

On Sat, 11 Feb 2012, Richard Gaskin wrote:


Alejandro Tejada wrote:


So, I find rather revealing that today so many developers
are mostly unaware of the existence of HyperCard.


I'd wager a majority of computing professionals these days don't even 
know who Vannevar Bush was, or Project Xanadu.  Kids...


Or Jeff Raskin, Doug Engelbart...

Judy
(catching up on email)

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Re: [OT] HyperCard and the Interactive Web

[Bob Sneidar]

I think back then there was such a distain for anything Macintosh in the PC 
world, that anyone faced with the decision about whether or not to include in a 
history of computing, Hypercard as a precursor to ALL Hypertext based systems 
would be inclined to decline. It's the old adage that the winners write the 
history books, and PC people of that ilk see themselves as "the winners" by 
sheer numbers. Macintoshes were not considered "serious business computers" 
back then, but were characterized as mere consumer toys. Just my guess tho'. 

Bob


On Feb 11, 2012, at 11:42 AM, Alejandro Tejada wrote:

> After reading about this recent legal bout
> for the interactive web:
> http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/02/10/1248234/texas-jury-strikes-down-mans-claim-to-own-the-interactive-web
> 
> I found revealing the way in which HyperCard
> keeps appearing as the first inspiration for the
> web browser as we know it today:
> 
> From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ViolaWWW#HyperCard
> 
> His interest in graphically based software began with HyperCard which he
> discovered in 1989. Gillies and Cailliau quote Wei on this discovery:
> "HyperCard was very compelling back then, you know graphically, this
> hyperlink thing, it was just not very global and it only worked on Mac...and
> I didn't even have a Mac" (p. 213). Only having access to X terminals, he
> (in 1990) created the first version of Viola for them: "I got a HyperCard
> manual and looked at it and just basically took the concepts and implemented
> them in X-windows[sic]"
> 
> So, I find rather revealing that today so many developers
> are mostly unaware of the existence of HyperCard.
> 
> These days, when someone study Information technology,
> DO NOT receive classes about the historical background
> of their profession?
> 
> I am curious, because I have to study the historical
> background of Design when studied it, so many years ago...
> 
> Why Information Technology would be different?
> 
> How could be helpful to be a complete ignorant
> of the origins, history and development of your
> own profession?
> 
> Al
> 
> --
> View this message in context: 
> http://runtime-revolution.278305.n4.nabble.com/OT-HyperCard-and-the-Interactive-Web-tp4379640p4379640.html
> Sent from the Revolution - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
> 
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Re: [OT] HyperCard and the Interactive Web

[Mark Wieder]

Richard-

At least Ted Nelson is still among us:

http://www.xanadu.com/zigzag/

-- 
-Mark Wieder
 mwie...@ahsoftware.net


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Re: [OT] HyperCard and the Interactive Web

[Kee Nethery]

On Feb 11, 2012, at 12:57 PM, Richard Gaskin wrote:

> I'd wager a majority of computing professionals these days don't even know 
> who Vannevar Bush was, or Project Xanadu.  Kids...

My wife owns a laser printed, hand bound user guide for Project Xanadu that she 
got from one of the guys on the project she was dating back then. About half an 
inch thick and interesting reading.

Kee
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Re: [OT] HyperCard and the Interactive Web

[Richmond]

On 02/11/2012 10:57 PM, Richard Gaskin wrote:

Alejandro Tejada wrote:


So, I find rather revealing that today so many developers
are mostly unaware of the existence of HyperCard.


I'd wager a majority of computing professionals these days don't even 
know who Vannevar Bush was, or Project Xanadu.  Kids...


:)



And how many people realise that Ada Lovelace was the Mother of them all.


--
 Richard Gaskin
 Fourth World
 LiveCode training and consulting: http://www.fourthworld.com
 Webzine for LiveCode developers: http://www.LiveCodeJournal.com
 LiveCode Journal blog: http://LiveCodejournal.com/blog.irv

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Re: [OT] HyperCard and the Interactive Web

[Richard Gaskin]

Alejandro Tejada wrote:


So, I find rather revealing that today so many developers
are mostly unaware of the existence of HyperCard.


I'd wager a majority of computing professionals these days don't even 
know who Vannevar Bush was, or Project Xanadu.  Kids...


:)

--
 Richard Gaskin
 Fourth World
 LiveCode training and consulting: http://www.fourthworld.com
 Webzine for LiveCode developers: http://www.LiveCodeJournal.com
 LiveCode Journal blog: http://LiveCodejournal.com/blog.irv

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Re: [OT] HyperCard and the Interactive Web

[Richmond]

On 02/11/2012 09:42 PM, Alejandro Tejada wrote:

After reading about this recent legal bout
for the interactive web:
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/02/10/1248234/texas-jury-strikes-down-mans-claim-to-own-the-interactive-web

I found revealing the way in which HyperCard
keeps appearing as the first inspiration for the
web browser as we know it today:

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ViolaWWW#HyperCard

His interest in graphically based software began with HyperCard which he
discovered in 1989. Gillies and Cailliau quote Wei on this discovery:
"HyperCard was very compelling back then, you know graphically, this
hyperlink thing, it was just not very global and it only worked on Mac...and
I didn't even have a Mac" (p. 213). Only having access to X terminals, he
(in 1990) created the first version of Viola for them: "I got a HyperCard
manual and looked at it and just basically took the concepts and implemented
them in X-windows[sic]"

So, I find rather revealing that today so many developers
are mostly unaware of the existence of HyperCard.

These days, when someone study Information technology,
DO NOT receive classes about the historical background
of their profession?

I am curious, because I have to study the historical
background of Design when studied it, so many years ago...

Why Information Technology would be different?

How could be helpful to be a complete ignorant
of the origins, history and development of your
own profession?


Well said.



Al

--
View this message in context: 
http://runtime-revolution.278305.n4.nabble.com/OT-HyperCard-and-the-Interactive-Web-tp4379640p4379640.html
Sent from the Revolution - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

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