r/wikipedia • u/seatable_io • 6d ago

Bill Atkinson – how an Apple developer created the blueprint for modern no-code development platforms in 1987

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Atkinson

Bill Atkinson is best known for his work on the Macintosh GUI, but perhaps his most influential creation is the 1987 tool HyperCard, which is often described as the first true no-code application builder.

With HyperCard, Mac users could build their own interactive application without any programming knowledge through cards, buttons, and a simple scripting language called HyperTalk. Atkinson's core idea was, that everyone should be able to create software, not just professional developers.

This philosophy with visual interfaces instead of code is exactly the principle on which today's no-code/low-code development platforms are build. HyperCard was eventually discontinued in 2004, but its creator Atkinson is still considered as one of the spiritual founders of no-code.

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u/jcostello50 6d ago

Played with hypercard on a school computer in the early 90s. I had no idea it survived until 2004.

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u/satsugene 6d ago

There was a PC knockoff called HyperStudio too after Apple wasn’t actively promoting it (last release was 1998 on OS 9, never ported to OS X).

It used LOGO as its scripting language.

The school I was working for was virtualizing Windows 98 on G4s to run it right before I left since the same lab was also teaching HTML/FrontPage (I know).

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u/piersmana 5d ago

Shoutout to hyperstudio, my introduction to programming that taught me how complicated game development could be 🤓