1. HyperCard HyperCard is the grand OG example of programming portals. Developed by Bill Atkinson at Apple in 1987, its interface married all the accessibility of simple, graphical user interfaces with the power of writing programmatic logic. Its core concepts were the card and the stack.

multi-dimensional erector set that we're going forever

The Apple of Steve Jobs needed HyperCard-like products like the Monsanto Company needs a $100 home genetic-engineering set.

The reason for this is that HyperCard is an echo of a different world. One where the distinction between the “use” and “programming” of a computer has been weakened and awaits near-total erasure.  A world where the personal computer is a mind-amplifier, and not merely an expensive video telephone.  A world in which Apple’s walled garden aesthetic has no place. What you may not know is that Steve Jobs killed far greater things than HyperCard.  He was almost certainly behind the death of SK8. And the Lisp Machine version of the Newton. And we may never learn what else. And Mr. Jobs had a perfectly logical reason to prune the Apple tree thus. He returned the company to its original vision: the personal computer as a consumer appliance, a black box enforcing a very traditional relationship between the vendor and the purchaser. Jobs supposedly claimed that he intended his personal computer to be a “bicycle for the mind.” But what he really sold us was a (fairly comfortable) train for the mind. A train which goes only where rails have been laid down, like any train, and can travel elsewhere only after rivers of sweat pour forth from armies of laborers. (Preferably in Cupertino.) The Apple of Steve Jobs needed HyperCard-like products like the Monsanto Company needs a $100 home genetic-engineering set. The Apple of today, lacking Steve Jobs — probably needs a stake through the heart.

It is this combination of features that also makes HyperCard a powerful hypermedia system. Users can build backgrounds to suit the needs of some system, say a rolodex, and use simple HyperTalk commands to provide buttons to move from place to place within the stack, or provide the same navigation system within the data elements of the UI, like text fields. Using these features, it is easy to build linked systems similar to hypertext links on the Web.[5] Unlike the Web, programming, placement, and browsing were all the same tool. Similar systems have been created for HTML but traditional Web services are considerably more heavyweight.