[ChristopherDrum]

Author here, I'm glad you enjoyed it. HyperTalk and Pascal are obviously very different beasts, I'm sure it was difficult to context switch between the two! For HyperCard stack developers, that resource fork was kind of a blessing, because we didn't need to wonder, "Where is my data?" It was right there in the stack itself, making it super-portable and easy to share. That comes with all of the downsides you might imagine, as skills and needs increased. But it was also a very welcoming environment for the development-curious.

I never found anything like HyperCard that predated HyperCard; it really did seem to be borne from a special burst of insight. I could be wrong though, because as soon as something is declared "the first" someone invariably finds a earlier protoype from PARC or somewhere.

Presentation software definitely feels similar, especially with its card-and-buttons metaphor. Its intentionality is obviously quite different, but I just did a quick look and it seems like there is VBA scripting available in PowerPoint. Maybe the distance between it and HyperCard isn't the vast gulf I thought. Even if that's the case, then it really only supports your conclusion, "We really haven't progressed that much more." That sense of stagnation gnaws at me, TBH.

Thanks for reading and sharing your story.