Today Alan Kay told me that in the hay day of Apple’s HyperCard, over four million people were programming in its HyperTalk language.
This number dwarfs the success of all other programming interventions. For example, the Scratch programming language for introducing kids to programming, which is considered by many to be a highly successful project, has several hundred thousand users — an order of magnitude fewer than HyperCard in its prime.
It’s odd to realize that the historical high point for widespread computer programming literacy occurred about a quarter of a century ago.
We really need to fix that.
I am interested in HyperCard, but I had never chance so far.
It seems Hypercard is not available anymore, but is it true? Is it possible to try that?
Hitoshi
That number sounds quite, er, optimistic; or perhaps Kay is using a very broad definition of “programming”.