The Genius behind HyperCard: Bill Atkinson



Author: from Quick Connect

Date: November  , 1987

Keywords: release profile interview

Text:
He is a dreamer, an inventor, a soft-ware artist, and one of the
biggest names in personal com ing.  Best known as the author of
MacPaint*, Bill Atkinson has a penchant for pushing the frontiers of
the Macin  dream: to put the power of the personal computer into every
user's hands.  First, he gave all of us the power to create so cated
graphics on a computer.  Now, he's given us the power to become
software developers without having to know a single word of pro ming
code.  HyperCard* is already pushing the outer limits of this dream
farther than anyone thought possible, except, of course, Bill himself.
     We asked Bill to tell us his story of HyperCard and to make a few
predictions about the future.  Here's what he had to say.
How did you get the idea for HyperCard?
     Actually, HyperCard is a descendant of two ideas.  One was the
give-away Rolodex program that I wrote just to keep track of my own
journal articles.  The other was a research project I did on what the
new generation com puter should uncompressed.  So I worked out a new
packing algorithm.  I remember waking up at four in the morning and
going down stairs to work on it.  Basically the algorithm I came up
with worked.  It allowed us to pack many many more images per disk that
we would have been able to oth wise.  
     Another breakthrough was working out the tech ogy for fast
searching.  In my research, I had already figured out that, at least
theoretically, the searching could be speeded up 100 times.  When I
actually got to doing it, the measured performance was 700 times
faster!  This breakthrough allowed us to search the Los Gatos town
library card catalog-which had 100,000 cards or 15 megabytes of text-in
2 seconds instead of 10 minutes.  We were really pleased.  It was very
exciting when that first broke.
How would you compare your work on HyperCard with MacPaint?  
     HyperCard is much more open and much more ambitious.  Unlike
MacPaint, HyperCard is something that you build on top of.  It's going
to open up people because there are so many things you can do with it. 
In terms of ambition, HyperCard is about 15 times as big as MacPaint. 
The assembly language alone in HyperCard is bigger than that in
QuickDraw.  It's certainly the largest thing I've attempted, and I
think its the most significant in terms of what it will do to the
computing com nity as a whole.  
What will HyperCard do to the computing community?
     All the people with great ideas or specialized knowledge of
information won't need access to a pro sional Macintosh programmer with
time on his hands to express themselves.  Making stacks is no big deal.
 It's easy.  The great ideas that are yet to come in the Macin tosh
world are mostly going to be from people who aren't programmers but who
have great ideas.  HyperCard is going to enable them.    
You've said that HyperCard is part of the original Macintosh dream. 
Could you explain what you mean?
     The Macintosh dream has really been putting the power of the
personal computer into an individual person's hands.  We succeeded to
some extent by using graphics and menus, and a consistent user
interface and direct-manipulation metaphors to make the software more
usable and accessible.  The end user didn't have to learn all the
control characters and all the command sequences and bits and bytes and
stuff like that.  You didn't have to be a computer jock to use the
Macintosh. 
     But at the same time, we made it harder for the pro mers to create
Macintosh applications.  It really takes not only a professional
programmer, but also someone who has spent a year or so learning the
Inside Macintosh handbook to understand how to use all the Toolkit
features, the graphics, the menus, etc.  So the Macintosh dream wasn't
really complete because the individuals couldn't get all the power of
the personal computer.  They could only use canned pieces of power.  
     HyperCard, acting like a software erector set, really opens up
Macintosh software architecture to where individual people can make
their own customized information environment, and interactive
information and applications without having to know any programming lan
guage.  It takes the creation of software down to the level of MacPaint
images that you like, then pasting buttons on top of them to make them
do what you want.  HyperCard puts this power into the hands of any
Macin tosh user. 
What is the most exciting thing about your work as a software designer?
     The art of creating software that is usable by individuals is a
communi tion skill.  It is not a pro ming skill.  Program ming and what
a software artist does is analogous to a pianist who needs to know how
to move the keys and have that down cold so that he can concen trate on
the feeling and message that he is portraying in his rendition of this
music.  So slinging the bits is an enabling technology for me to
express and com cate and teach.  The most exciting thing for me is when
I see people amazed and pleased at the newfound power they got from a
program-when they say, ''Wow,  I can do this!''  That's the feeling
people got back in 1984 when they saw MacPaint and started using it. 
It's the same kind of feeling that is going to happen here with
HyperCard.  But that feeling will be magni fied, because the amount of
power you get out of HyperCard is really so much greater.  HyperCard is
going to open up the whole meaning of what personal computers can be.
Can you make any predictions about the future?
     I think if we look a year from now, I'll bet there will be 20
times as many people making interactive in tion for the Macintosh as
there are now.  A lot of people are going to get opened up, enabled,
empowered to control their computer.  That's really what we're trying
to do.  It's the same dream.  Nothing's changed.  It's the original
Macintosh dream of making the power of personal computer accessible to
in als.  HyperCard is just unfolding another layer of Macintosh.  It
touches all the people who now own Macintosh computers, and a lot of
people who are going to own them because of this. 

Copyright © november , 1987 by from Quick Connect