HyperTalk hype

You may briefly see a resurgence in HyperCard script hype.

The script, HyperTalk, uses quasi-English as a gimmick aimed at, say, high school teachers who do not relish teaching programming and may only know a procedural paradigm.

Enter, stage left, "stacks" and "cards" without programming.

But a time comes when some text needs to be modified in accordance with some rule or pattern.

This is a teaching example :

function replaceStr pattern,newStr,inStr
   repeat while pattern is in inStr
      put offset(pattern,inStr) into pos
      put newStr into character pos to (pos +the length of pattern)-1 of inStr
   end repeat
   return inStr
end replaceStr


Can you see why the example is problematic?

No one who understood this code needs "is in" and all the rest of the quasi-English of this supposedly "non-programmer" scripting language.

So if someone tells you that your kid can build software in, say, RunRev "LiveCode" for free without learning how to program "the old way" you might ask them if that amazing thing comes complete with free money and winning lottery tickets as well.

There are alternatives out there : Rebol, Icon, Smalltalk but there is no escape from programming in software development ... not even for "mobile" or Android or iPad or "the web".

Posted with the usual apologies for not mentioning LISP in that list.

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