HyperCard was what made me fall in love with computers and programming.
My specific "moment" was when I was a kid (probably 11 or 12 at the time) and went to see a presentation by a science professor about his work (my mom worked at the university, so I kinda had to go to this particular talk, because, well, she was my ride home)... It's hard to imagine, but presentation software like PowerPoint back then was in its infancy. Using computers to do presentations was a new thing (vs using slides developed on film or overhead projectors).
So to make his presentation, the professor created a HyperCard deck of all the slides he wanted to present. And, more importantly, he had to create little forward and back buttons on each slide to go forward or back in the presentation (again, he basically was creating a version of PowerPoint in that moment)...
But that's not what got my attention... Halfway through the presentation, one of the buttons on screen didn't work. He apologized, quickly switched to code edit mode, fixed the bug by adding a line of code, then went back to normal mode and continued his presentation. I can't remember anything else that happened other than being completelydumbfounded that you could change/edit a program's code like that whileusingthesamesoftware.
After that, I was hooked. I immediately got a book on HyperCard and learned how to recreate the miracle I saw in that presentation.
Long story long, HyperCard was PowerPoint or Keynote before slide deck software existed. And it blewmymind and launched my interest in a software career.
My specific "moment" was when I was a kid (probably 11 or 12 at the time) and went to see a presentation by a science professor about his work (my mom worked at the university, so I kinda had to go to this particular talk, because, well, she was my ride home)... It's hard to imagine, but presentation software like PowerPoint back then was in its infancy. Using computers to do presentations was a new thing (vs using slides developed on film or overhead projectors).
So to make his presentation, the professor created a HyperCard deck of all the slides he wanted to present. And, more importantly, he had to create little forward and back buttons on each slide to go forward or back in the presentation (again, he basically was creating a version of PowerPoint in that moment)...
But that's not what got my attention... Halfway through the presentation, one of the buttons on screen didn't work. He apologized, quickly switched to code edit mode, fixed the bug by adding a line of code, then went back to normal mode and continued his presentation. I can't remember anything else that happened other than being completely dumbfounded that you could change/edit a program's code like that while using the same software.
After that, I was hooked. I immediately got a book on HyperCard and learned how to recreate the miracle I saw in that presentation.
Long story long, HyperCard was PowerPoint or Keynote before slide deck software existed. And it blew my mind and launched my interest in a software career.