I agree entirely, especially as modern systems massively ballooning the required knowledge and skill.

However, I do think there could’ve perhaps been a happy medium, where OS’s retained and continued to develop a simple, built in way to program easily and without setup to retain the spirit of what BASIC provided.

I guess I’m imagining a sort’ve evolved version of Hypercard, which seemed to be on the path of providing something like that.

The beauty of HyperCard is that it lets people program without having to learn how to write code — what I call “programming for the rest of us”. HyperCard has made it possible for people to do things they wouldn’t have ever thought of doing in the past without a lot of heavy-duty programming. It’s let a lot of non-programmers, like me, into that loop.

David Lingwood, APDA

There seems to be Decker as a spiritual successor, which is pretty neat.

Cheers for mentioning that, I hadn’t heard of Phoenix, but looks like an excellent alternative.

As someone who also bounced off Manuskript for similar reasons, I think this will be right up your alley. :)

I went outside of my usual wheelhouse and tried playing some of the Wario games for the gameboy advance. Finished Warioware in one afternoon (very fun short little collection of mini games) and currently on Wario Land 4. It’s a platformer with light puzzle elements, and I’m quite surprised at how much I’ve been enjoying it, as I usually don’t mesh with platformers.

In a way, it reminds me of one of the later Commander Keen games, but with much better level design and variety in gameplay.

It’s a polished and quirky little game, and its handheld roots lend itself to short sessions, which has been all I have time for.

I think I’ll be investigating the earlier entries after I complete it. Certainly recommend it if you have access to a handheld emulator!

Yes.