The Revolution will be programmed, Part 1

Network World - When someone describes someone else as "long in the tooth" you know what they mean: That the target of the soubriquet is getting on in years.

OK, but do you know where that phrase comes from? The answer is from the horse world: Horses' teeth grow throughout their lives and, despite getting worn down by chewing hay and such, horses show progressively more enamel as they age. Thus, you can roughly tell the age of a horse from how "long in the tooth" it is. Now you know.

Anyway, should you also be "long in the tooth" you'll remember a programming system called "HyperCard."

Created for Apple Computer and released in 1987, HyperCard was the first "hypermedia" system, a term coined for a hyperlinked collection of various forms of media (text, video, audio and so on) that creates a non-linear multimedia presentation; what are essentially complex, engaging rat holes of content that can suck you into their yawning limbo for hours on end. In other words, exactly what the Web has become.

HyperCard also had its own language called HyperTalk, which eventually evolved into Apple's AppleScript.

HyperTalk had an almost English-like, chatty quality described in that classic of hacker literature, the Jargon File under the heading "candygrammar."

The Jargon File explains candygrammar as "a programming-language grammar that is mostly syntactic sugar … The usual intent of such designs is that they be as English-like as possible, on the theory that they will then be easier for unskilled people to program."

The File continues: "This intention comes to grief on the reality that syntax isn't what makes programming hard; it's the mental effort and organization required to specify an algorithm precisely that costs. Thus the invariable result is that 'candygrammar' languages are just as difficult to program in as terser ones, and far more painful for the experienced hacker."

We'll revisit the candygrammar issue a little later, but for now here's an example of HyperTalk programming from the  Wikipedia entry to give you a flavor of the language:

on mouseUp    put "100,100" into pos    repeat with x = 1 to the number of card buttons        set the location of card button x to pos        add 15 to item 1 of pos    end repeatend mouseUpPretty chatty, eh? Anyway, HyperCard was a groundbreaking concept and existed as a product for sale until 2004, the year it was officially terminated (it had not been updated for some years).

The importance of HyperCard in computer and Internet history cannot be underestimated: For example, Ward Cunningham, considered to be the father of Wiki, contends that a HyperCard stack he wrote in the late 1980s was the genesis of the whole Wiki concept.