It was pretty cool, lonnnng time ago!

Also a cult favorite on HN, as it was an end-user programming system that actually resulted in a million (or so) end users creating their own apps (perhaps foreshadowing the era of people creating their own web sites with html and javascript, or games using Flash and actionscript.) And famously used to create the game Myst.

HyperCard came out of a leave of absence that Bill Atkinson took from Apple after Microsoft had forced Apple to kill MacBASIC. Unfortunately the deal he made with Apple to distribute it for free with every Mac was only for two years, and Apple replaced it with a playback-only "HyperCard Player" while the authoring capability was sold as a separate product by Claris - effectively killing in-the-box end-user programming on the Mac. [2] (AppleScript resembled HyperTalk, but didn't include an easy-to-use authoring environment, perhaps to avoid competing with HyperCard). Development stagnated as well; no native PowerPC version was created, and HyperCard never evolved to run over a network, much less the internet (even though HyperCard influenced NCSA Mosaic and Apple was certainly aware of early networked hypertext systems like Intermedia, which ran on the Mac).

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FquNpWdf9vg

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejdgTVj7ZG8