Hurry up and get to the studio in your high powered vehicle before your implant times out!

Its ok he'll just slot some new softs from Shinjuku corp and break the ICE on the implants from his VR 3d rendered file system that he jockeys into with his Nintendo power glove.

*Oh god, you made me remember Adobe Atmosphere was a thing...

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

I didn't know Adobe Atmosphere was a thing. Thank you for providing another example of that strange period of MMO-lites like Worlds and VRML. Interesting to think Adobe Atmosphere versus Worlds mirrors the much later one-sided walloping of Metaverse versus VR Chat.

Huh - I don't remember Atmosphere ... just VRML ?

Thanks for the link!

It’s TV. You’re getting derivative pablum in the best case.

It bugs me that there are two kinds of languages. Parameters and variables could be typed optionally in a dynamic language; either error in the compiler or at runtime; otherwise you just haven’t made any type errors while you coded and the code is fine either way.

This is what gradual typing (such as TypeScript, or the use of Python annotations for type-checking) accomplishes. The issue is that it basically always is bolted on after the fact. I have faith that we aren't at the end of PL history, and won't be surprised if the next generation of languages integrate gradual typing more thoughtfully.

The problem with these two languages is that the runtime type system is completely different (and much weaker) than the compile time one; so that the only way to be safe is to statically type the whole program.

CL has a pretty anemic type system, but at least it does gradual without having to resort to this.

JavaScript caught on because it was the best casual language. They've been trying to weigh it down ever since with their endless workgroup functionality and build processes. If we get a next generation casual language, it'll have to come from some individual who wants it to happen.

No, JavaScript caught on because at the time it was the only game in town for writing web front-ends, and then people wanted it to run on the server side so that they could share code and training between front end and back end.

It's not enough to just be first. It would have been replaced by now if it wasn't fit for purpose. Otherwise we might as well not bother to critique anything.

This is all going to flash through your mind when your car mysteriously doesn't turn left. I would prefer to think of machines as things with defined outputs and failure is failure, more than as fluffy little kittens who might do the wrong thing, if the consequences are going to fall on someone who doesn't deserve it.

Hello, if there are no XCMDs it should work adequately in HyperCard Simulator. I am only on my phone but I took a minute to import it.

https://hcsimulator.com/imports/MacMind---Trained-69E0132C

I had no idea your simulator existed. No XCMDs, correct; everything is pure HyperTalk. I just ran a few training steps and they complete in a second or two. Thank you for importing it!

I gotta ask. Your scripts have comments like -- handlers_math.hypertalk.txt at the top. Are you using some kind of build process for a stack?

More of a copy-paste process. The scripts are written as .txt files in Nova on my Mac Studio, then pasted one at a time into HyperCard's script editor on the classic Mac. The files are kept separate because SimpleText has a 32 KB text limit.

As an alternative, you might consider letting Hypercard itself open the text files and 'set the script of' as needed.

Yup, that would have been easier. It's been decades since I've done anything with HyperCard. I had to re-take the built-in intro course again :)

Would that overcome the size limit?

Does HyperCard implement its on text handling for the HyperTalk editor that doesn't rely on the TextEdit toolbox service (which IIRC is the source of SimpleText's 32 kB limit)?

Fields appeared to use TE and I suppose the script editor was pretty much limited to 32 kB of text for that reason, although you could have any size of text in a variable.

Curiousity got the better of me, and I just tested it in Infinite Mac.

The HyperTalk editor is indeed limited to 32 kB.

It's certainly possible that this limit only applies to editing scripts, as it's unlikely TextEdit was used in the process of interpreting them, but I don't have time tonight to investigate.

Later versions of HyperCard supported OSA scripts as well, now I'm also curious what the size limit is for (presumably) compiled AppleScripts stored in HyperCard stacks.

Why is that inconvenient? It’s a hyphen with modifier keys.

The people paid for that welfare for themselves. Everything that helps people is a scare word. They’re too entitled to welfare!

To be fair, what would an interesting and valuable human observation of an AI even look like? Either you know it's a machine doing random stuff, or you think it's like some kind of superintelligent lava lamp that wants you to throw Molotov cocktails.

> eml(x,y)=exp(x)-ln(y)

Exp and ln, isn't the operation its own inverse depending on the parameter? What a neat find.

> isn't the operation its own inverse depending on the parameter?

This is a function from ℝ² to ℝ. It can't be its own inverse; what would that mean?

It's a kind of superposition representation a la Kolmogorov-Arnold, a learnable functional basis for elementary functions g(x,y)=f(x) - f^{-1}(y) in this sense with f=exp.

eml(1,eml(x,1)) = eml(eml(1,x),1) = exp(ln(x)) = ln(exp(x)) = x

But f(x) = eml(1, x) and g(x) = eml(x, 1) are different operations. What operation are you saying is supposed to be its own inverse?

eml(1,eml(x,1)) = e + x

and

eml(eml(1,x),1) = e^e * x

Okay, I’m tired. Not quite inverse but per the title , must be a way.

I was mistaken above in the first identity, it is

eml(1,eml(x,1)) = e - x

Which then if you iterate gives x (ie is inverse of itself).

eml(1,eml(eml(1,eml(x,1)),1)) = x

Sharing our Mac themes simulators? Here is my entrant: https://hcsimulator.com/ Full compatibility with HyperCard stacks, including their resource forks if they are in StuffIt archives.

Beautiful little story about Ziggy