As sad as it is to remember Bill Atkinson’s legacy in the wake of his passing, it makes me deeply happy that this was the post that resonated most. Humanity, empathy, and respect are still the best algorithm. Give yourself a tap, #Mastodon.

#billatkinson #macintosh #retrocomputing #retromacintosh
#hypercard #macpaint #vintagecomputing #socialmedia https://masto.pt/@OnceUponAGoblin/114643432853682723

on june 5, bill atkinson passed away at the age of 74 at his home in portola valley, california. his family confirmed the cause was pancreatic cancer.

before the macintosh, computing was still largely limited to text commands. atkinson’s contributions made personal computing visual, intuitive and human centered. he believed deeply in the potential of technology to empower creativity and expression.

Ever since I heard about Bill Atkinson’s passing, I’ve been diving into everything I can find about HyperCard. Today, while the world was glued to WWDC25, I was off exploring alternate timelines—asking ChatGPT what HyperCard and the world might have become if it had never been discontinued. It was a blast.

I’ve witnessed only a tiny number of noteworthy moments in #tech, but as a summer intern in 1987 I attended MacWorld and was in the auditorium when Bill Atkinson introduced #HyperCard. Completely mind-blowing: graphics, simplicity, expressiveness.

I remember HyperTalk’s surprising use of `it` as an accumulator:

```
get the selection
put it into the message box
```

I can’t name a contemporary user-friendly #programming environment that lets you create apps/sites as easily as HyperCard did.

#grateful for Bill Atkinson and #HyperCard

HyperSchool is a HyperCard application for schools to do scheduling, attendance, and grades.

It includes thousands of lines of #HyperTalk code, plus some
C code to interface to a scantron machine and to do simulated annealing
before the user gets old.

HyperCard : l'un des plus beaux concepts d'Apple http://dlvr.it/TLDrP8 #Apple #HyperCard

Bill Atkinson: Der Zeitlose Pionier der Computertechnologie
Die Welt der digitalen Innovation hat am 5. Juni 2025 einen ihrer brillantesten Köpfe verloren. Bill Atkinson, der berühmte Macintosh-Pionier und Erfinder von HyperCard, verstarb i
https://www.apfeltalk.de/magazin/news/bill-atkinson-der-zeitlose-pionier-der-computertechnologie/
#News #Tellerrand #Apple #BillAtkinson #Computerindustrie #Fotografie #HyperCard #Innovation #Macintosh #MagicSlate #QuickDraw #Technologie #WorldWideWeb

RIP Bill Atkinson - one of the original Macintosh team.

He created both MacPaint & Hypercard which had a big influence on me as a kid.

https://appleinsider.com/articles/25/06/07/bill-atkinson-pioneering-early-apple-engineer-dies-at-74

#Hypercard was one of the formative influences on my development as a software developer and researcher. I'd done a bunch of programming in various flavors of Basic and C when I first started using it, but Hypercard was the first programming language that I used to solve real problems, ranging from writing up my HS Chemistry Lab reports, to cataloguing my coin collection, to developing a re-enactment of the climactic scene of the Merchant of Venice. I have fond memories of my high school Hypercard programming class (see the movie Hackers for a surprisingly realistic re-enactment), where we got to play with the school's scheduling system, written in hypercard (with fake data though)

RIP #BillAtkinson. Your contributions to our lives will ripple throughout time.

RIP Bill Atkinson

Should the next #MARCHintosh be dedicated to Bill Atkinson? His work—MacPaint, HyperCard, and a visionary approach to software—defined the soul of early Macintosh. Every retro Mac celebrates him in spirit, but perhaps this time we could make it official.

So, Bill Atkinson is probably the reason I stuck with computers, and definitely the reason I wound up on Macs. I'd done bits of programming before I stumbled across HyperCard (BASIC, 6502 Assembler, Pascal, shell scripting, blah blah blah—even smidgens of FORTRAN and COBOL) but it was always with disinterest: I just wanted to do a thing, and if I had to program to do it…sigh, *fine.* I couldn't wait to put the task behind me.

But HyperCard…HyperCard made programming accessible and fun. And while HyperCard (and HyperTalk) had distinct limitations and shortcomings, it was amazing what it could be pushed to do—and I enjoyed doing it, which is something I cannot say of *any* development environment I've worked with since.

I worked on games and educational titles built in HyperCard, and I created heaps of specialty and in-house systems (some of which were running until very recently). For years I ran a specialized web crawler that was (yep) built in HyperCard. Large parts of the backend for TidBITS were glued together with HyperCard. And no, none of this was rock solid, but it was very rare that HyperCard was the piece that failed.

Of course, Bill Atkinson's contributions to the Mac, to computing, and the world were much larger than HyperCard. He was a giant, and I'm privileged to have stood on a tiny portion of one of his shoulders. Thank you.

"It was Mr. Atkinson who programmed QuickDraw, a foundational software layer used for both the Lisa and Macintosh computers; composed of a library of small programs, it made it possible to display shapes, text and images on the screen efficiently."
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/07/technology/bill-atkinson-dead.html

good long night bill. your software lives on with us.

https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/06/07/bill-atkinson-rip

Twin Peaks on #HyperCard, 1991-94; via @internetarchive.

The genius behind MacPaint, HyperCard, and so many other groundbreaking creations has left us. I like to think that Bill Atkinson is now in a better place—one where HyperCard was never discontinued, and its legacy lives on, evolving as it always should have.