[ezy]

You're completely missing my point. I'm actually sort of agreeing with you -- but I'm also saying you don't really need (want?) to duplicate Hypercard.

Let's just say that considerably more than "thousands" have written BASIC programs that were real useful applications in their day. I would not argue that people have not done the same in Hypercard.

There's nothing special about hypercard. What's special is having an easy-to-use beginner programming environment that you could create fairly good small programs in -- in comparison to the commercial offerings of the day. BASIC was that, Hypercard was that, but that only partially exists today as the web stack because of it's baroque nature.

"Foundations matter" is really a tautology. I don't think the problem is the foundations. We build on sand all the time. Certainly without a foundation, you're fucked, but you place too much importance on it. Saying something like "Foundations matter" is pretending to be profound without substance. I might just as well say that "Input devices matter" -- and they do -- but how much do they matter? Is everything fucked because we all use mice & keyboards?

[asciilifeform]

> "Foundations matter" is pretending to be profound without substance

Please take the time to read my article. The kind of pieces you get when something breaks or needs reworking does matter.

> Is everything fucked because we all use mice & keyboards?

I do not myself believe this, but there are those who do, and their arguments are worth paying attention to.

[ezy]

Yes, I read your article. I think I understand where you're coming from, but it's completely circular. All you need to do is create another mostly impermeable strata. People do this all the time, and it has been wildly successful so far.

In that sense, original foundations don't matter. But, of course, they do, 'cause you had to build a new strata, right? Round and round...

And, in the passing of time, you can simply replace the underlying foundations with something more unified. This, again, happens all the time. CPUs gain SIMD instructions and new addressing modes, VM support, etc. I fully expect, while nothing like DESCRIPTOR, more hardware support for higher level GC to come if its worth is proven.

The input device remark was probably a poor analogy, but it is somewhat similar. "Input devices matter". Well, duh, yeah. But it certainly is not a good summary of an argument to replace the mouse and keyboard with an generalized gesture recognition device. :-) The mouse was an addition to the keyboard, not a reconstruction of it. If we find that, say, speech is better at some things, we don't propose to take away everything else. We build on top, because, while it may offend the sensibilities of some -- you can fix the warts later.

You're right to say that we're all working on huge 8bit micros to an extent -- but beyond the historical implications, it's circular to think that really matters. It's why Alan Kay now sounds like a grumpy old man, as Raskin does, as most people who moan about lisp machines and the DESCRIPTOR architecture. Today, I can run emulations of these things far, far faster than the originals and the software on my box is far more capable than the software people were using then. The real world favors cutting away/polishing a turd into a smooth stone, not piling up someone's perfect diamonds -- because restarting from scratch every time you discover something new is wasted work.