[comp.sys.mac.hypercard] "Innovative Software like Hypercard"

limoges@ac.dal.ca (07/11/90)

In comp.sys.mac.hypercard Anthony E. Siegman writes:

>But I'll point out once again -- hope this doesn't get tiresome --
>that for the amateur, occasional, part-time programmer (at any level
>from high-school student to full professor) who wants to write a few
>real Mac-like programs now and then, to do real work, QuickBASIC
>provides a superb, powerful, easy to learn and easy to use real Mac
>programming environment and language.

>Certain interface-intensive tasks I'd certainly chose to implement in
>HyperCard.  But QuickBASIC programming on the Mac, even with interface
>considerations included, is certainly no harder to learn or use than
>is HyperCard scripting, especially if you want to "write a program";
>and the hardware and memory requirements are very much less.  (And you
>can end up with a nice small free-standing clickable application.)

About a yaer ago, I was faced with the task of developing several data
processing applications for the lab I work in. I didn't want to get into
C programming at the time, so I purchased QuickBASIC. Big mistake! These
applications were going to be used by people who knew close to nothing
about computers and making a smooth mac application from QuickBASIC
turned out to be overly tedious.

Finally I turned to HyperCard, which made all interface related tasks
simple. Furthermore, many powerful XCMD's and XFCN's were available in
the public domain -with fantastic user support- to speed up things and
do tasks HC could not handle. Now, I write some of my own XCMD's and
XFCN's with HyperBasic, and I have to say that the HC/HyperBasic
combination is much superior 'for the amateur, occasional, part-time
programmer' than QuickBASIC will ever be.

By the way, would anyone be interested in purchasing a virtually unused
QuickBASIC?

                                       Bertrand Limoges