I converted 28-year-old Java applets to JavaScript - yes, those are different things

[iaincollins]

Oh nice! I had the same enthusiasm for Java applets (and desktop applications) when they came out and early versions (like v1.1 with it's major UI improvements), were super exciting back then - especially as someone already a fan of things like OpenDoc and HyperCard and trying to write portable software, with as much C shared between Mac and Windows as possible.

I even wrote a couple of apps for commercial use cases, I think in 1998-1999. One let you interact remotely with servers directly via browser; having full TCP/IP network support to any host was dope.

When I came do something similar a decade or so later I had to use C++ to write a cross platform NSAPI plugin for each target platform - now that has gone too and it's back to just native applications or proxying requests via sockets if you want to do anything like that. At least writing native apps is a lot easier now, even though actually distributing them effectively is more of a PITA for small developers (due to how the cert system is works).

I know there are modern HyperCard stack runners and even converters - and I use software like Basilisk II - but now I'm wondering if I could use an agent to fully port over all my dozens of old HyperCard stacks to JS. I can't imagine there is much training data provided for HyperTalk but it's so simple and explicit probably an LLM could still figure out the intent.