Beyond Loom
beyondloom.com · Personal blog · on HN since 2020
Beyond Loom is the site of the author of Decker, a HyperCard-like tool, and Lil, a scripting language, who also works on K and APL.
What HN saysHN commenters recommend browsing all of the author's projects and link the post explaining his HyperCard inspirations.
79HN people shared it
49linked it in comments
83stories submitted
2.3Kstory points
3 months agolast shared
2020people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Decker – A HyperCard Replacement14 people · 203 points · first shared 2022 · 36 comments on HN
- 2Decker: A reincarnation of HyperCard with 1-bit graphics11 people · 498 points · first shared 2022 · 88 comments on HN
- 3Atkinson Dithering (2021)10 people · 242 points · first shared 2021 · 104 comments on HN
- 4Lil: A Scripting Language9 people · 106 points · first shared 2022 · 28 comments on HN
- 5Stages of Denial8 people · 265 points · first shared 2021 · 117 comments on HN
- 6A Multimedia Sketchpad6 people · 12 points · first shared 2025 · discussion on HN
- 7Tour6 people · first shared 2022
- 8Special K: an interactive K compiler that generates GLSL5 people · 106 points · first shared 2020 · 19 comments on HN
- 9Your First THINK C Program4 people · 269 points · first shared 2020 · 88 comments on HN
- 10Ranking of Fruits: Sorting in JavaScript, K, and Lil4 people · 12 points · first shared 2024 · discussion on HN
- 11K Slices, K Dices4 people · 8 points · first shared 2024 · discussion on HN
- 12A World Without Strings Is Chaos3 people · 75 points · first shared 2020 · 59 comments on HN
- 13K Fragments3 people · 50 points · first shared 2020 · 35 comments on HN
- 14The Life of Lil3 people · 5 points · first shared 2023 · discussion on HN
- 15The Benefits of Conforming3 people · 3 points · first shared 2024 · 2 comments on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
WalterGR · 2026-06-29
Some past discussions of Decker:
4 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33377964 - "Decker, a platform that builds on the legacy of Hypercard and classic macOS"
2 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38985409 - "Decker – A HyperCard Replacement"
2 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40292181 - "Decker: A reincarnation of HyperCard with 1-bit graphics"
It's both native and web-based. Web version: https://www.beyondloom.com/decker/tour.html
Click File -> Cards... to see how the guided tour is constructed.
NeutralForest · 2026-06-29
I can only recommend looking at all the Decker author's projects. He's done work on APL languages, GUIs, interactive programming, etc. https://beyondloom.com/things/index.html
A cool person making cool things!
hendersonreed · 2026-03-06
there's a great blogpost explaining the creator's inspirations in hypercard also: https://beyondloom.com/blog/sketchpad.html
agentultra · 2025-12-12
Is it still being maintained? There used to be a game jam, Octojam, that was stopped years ago[0]. Seems mostly out of a lack of interest? Would be cool if it revived.
It inspired me to start zig8[1], my own CHIP-8 emulator. It's not ready for prime time yet but it's getting there. When it's ready I hope it will have a visual debugger and feel good: fast, better shaders, better sound, good defaults, etc.
CHIP-8 is a neat system. If you're interested in emulation it's a great place to start in my humble opinion. It's simple enough that you can finish it before deciding whether you like writing emulators.
Hopefully interest in CHIP-8 would pick up again, it's a neat bit of history and a cool little system.
[0] https://beyondloom.com/blog/octojam.html
[1] https://github.com/agentultra/zig8
jcmorrow · 2025-11-11
Thanks for sharing that perspective! I have not delved too far into k, though I have been a few times confused and discouraged by the fact that there are different versions of the language that are not compatible with each other, and some are proprietary (if I understand the state of the language correctly). Is there a specific version that is best to learn first?
Edit: I just realized that you are the creator of https://beyondloom.com/tools/specialk.html and https://beyondloom.com/decker/index.html. I just want to say that your work is awesome! I've really enjoyed reading through your website many a time.
beagle3 · 2025-06-08
Thanks, Bill. Rest in Peace.
I was amazed by Bill's software seeing it on a Mac back then - MacPaint mostly, then HyperCard. I was not even 10, but I was already programming, and spent hours trying to figure out how to implement MacPaint's Lasso on my humble ZX Spectrum. (With some success, but not quite as elegant...)
If you want to experience HyperCard, John Earnest (RodgerTheGreat on HN[0]) built Decker[1] that runs on both the web and natively, and captures the aesthetic and most stuff perfectly. It uses Lil as a programming language - it is different than HyperTalk, but beautiful in its own right. (It doesn't read as English quite the way HyperTalk does, but it is more regular and easier to write - it's a readable/writable vector language, quite unlike those other ones ...)
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=RodgerTheGreat
[1] https://beyondloom.com/decker/
dzaima · 2025-02-11
Oh, another interesting thing is http://beyondloom.com/tools/specialk.html - a simple k DSL for shaders. Though it still follows the shader language paradigm of running the function for each pixel separately, rather than the array language paradigm of taking & returning a list of things to process.
mlochbaum · 2025-01-27
https://beyondloom.com/decker/lil.html
See also https://beyondloom.com/blog/rankingoffruits.html for a nice introduction to the query syntax and its relation to K. (And RodgerTheGreat is John Earnest, the author).
RodgerTheGreat · 2024-08-29
One of the most famous indie games riffing on Sokoban and playing with expectations for its gameplay is the delightful Baba Is You.[0]
If you're interested in trying to make your own variations on Sokoban-like games, PuzzleScript[1] is tailor-made for the task, with a fascinating declarative approach to describing game rules.
A Sokoban-like game can also be an excellent way to familiarize yourself with a new game engine or graphics toolkit. My own project, Decker, includes a very short Sokoban to demonstrate how one might make turn-based tile-oriented games.[2]
[0] https://www.hempuli.com/baba/
[1] https://www.puzzlescript.net
[2] http://beyondloom.com/decker/goofs/sokoban.html
metadat · 2024-05-07
Folks: Don't forget to try it out yourself!
https://www.beyondloom.com/decker/tour.html
This triggered amazingly sweet memories for me, am I alone?
My only wish would be to have pinch-zooming on mobile.
smartmic · 2024-05-07
Not mentioned in the article, but good to know: Lil is the scripting language of Decker, which itself is a fantastic reincarnation of Hypercard with 1-bit graphics.
https://www.beyondloom.com/decker/index.html
zephraph · 2023-05-28
Anytime Lua comes up I'm reminded of John Earnest's Lil scripting language[1]. It's inspired by Lua and Q, built for Decker[2] which is a re-imagined version of HyperCard. Generally though, I love lua for its embeddability and am extremely happy anytime I see someone chatting about integrating it. Modding and scripting in games was a tremendous motivation for me to dig more into programming and these approachable languages are a core aspect of that.
[1] https://beyondloom.com/decker/lil.html
[2] https://beyondloom.com/decker/
eggy · 2022-12-26
If you want to play with a modern Hypercard, I recommend John Earnest's Decker[1]. It even has the Mac look. John created Lil, a scripting language from it that is declarative, functional, and vector oriented. He is also the creator of oK[2] an interpreter for a K-type programming language with a web interface and graphics and sound primitives. Amazing and fun stuff!
[1] https://beyondloom.com/decker/
[2] https://github.com/JohnEarnest/ok
jansan · 2022-12-19
It should be noted that Atkinson dithering is just a variation of Floyd-Steinberg dithering. The concept is quite simple, you take the error at a pixel and distribute it to adjacent pixels (the sum of all error parts must be 1). You can actually create your own dithering algorithm quite easily, but I doubt that it will be better than the existing ones.
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Here is a great visual explanation of both algorithms with a comparison. Implementing them is a nice and quite simple project.
https://beyondloom.com/blog/dither.html
kick · 2021-02-04
He has a lot of really good blog posts and software toys on his site and on itch. I recommend looking through them. He also has a web comic that's pretty good, but he hasn't updated it in a while.
http://beyondloom.com/blog/index.html
http://beyondloom.com/things/index.html
http://beyondloom.com/games/index.html
http://beyondloom.com/comic/page0.html
('RodgerTheGreat on HN)
captn3m0 · 2020-09-29
Here's my favorite one: http://www.beyondloom.com/things/reciprocity.html
Works like magic, for most recipes I've tried.
smnscu · 2020-03-09
Thanks for the tip. Looks like they also have a webcomic: http://beyondloom.com/
butlike · 2026-06-30
The slippery slope game editor is pretty cool. https://beyondloom.com/tools/slipedit.html
You can click the link at the top to play the original game. It's a 5-10 minute adventure that I enjoyed, fwiw
jdsane · 2026-05-17
it's made with "WigglyPaint" (https://beyondloom.com/tools/wigglypaint.html#main).
oidar · 2025-12-10
If you like that, check out Decker https://beyondloom.com/decker/ Super fun to use.
Schiphol · 2025-10-01
> RIP HyperCard, may you be never forgotten.
There's Decker https://beyondloom.com/decker/
drewchew · 2025-08-19
This looks super cool and I'm hyped to try it. Reminds me of Decker https://www.beyondloom.com/decker/index.html which I saw on hacker news ~18 months ago, similar ethos but this seems like it will be more applicable to daily use cases.
Scaevolus · 2025-06-11
Decker absolutely enables malleable software: https://beyondloom.com/decker/
You can tell when a platform is succeeding at this by looking at its adoption among non-programmers.
ksherlock · 2025-06-08
Decker supports color.
https://beyondloom.com/decker/color.html#Index
_ache_ · 2025-04-13
I did the same like 2 weeks ago. In Rust. ^^
I'm still trying to improve it a little. https://git.ache.one/dither/tree/?h=%f0%9f%aa%b5
I didn't published it because it's hard to actually put dithered images on the web, you can't resize a dithered image. So on the web, you have to dither it on the fly. It's why, in the article, there is some artifacts in the images. I still need to learn about dithering.
Reference: https://sheep.horse/2022/12/pixel_accurate_atkinson_dithering_for_imag…
Cool links about dithering: - https://beyondloom.com/blog/dither.html - https://blog.maximeheckel.com/posts/the-art-of-dithering-and-retro-sha…
tosh · 2024-07-28
You might like "Special K" by John Earnest
http://beyondloom.com/tools/specialk.html
iso8859-1 · 2024-06-26
How does this compare to Decker ?
https://beyondloom.com/decker/index.html
hoosieree · 2024-05-31
Come check out some of the array languages[1,2,3], or perhaps the retro-computing comfy vibes of a system like Decker[4]. Some of us still appreciate code as poetry.
[1]: https://mlochbaum.github.io/BQN/
[2]: https://www.uiua.org/
[3]: https://code.kx.com/q/learn/tour/
[4]: https://beyondloom.com/decker/tour.html
MaskRay · 2024-05-27
Decker builds on the legacy of HyperCard and MacPaint, and utilizes an interesting little language (https://beyondloom.com/decker/lil.html 2022 HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33393283)
rickcarlino · 2024-05-02
1. Decker is the closest modern equivalent https://beyondloom.com/decker/
2. Bubble is easy for non-coders. https://bubble.io/
3. Gambas BASIC is a bit more technical, but will give you hard 90's vibes (Linux only) https://gambas.sourceforge.net/en/main.html
I think the advent of LLMs might make these types of tools more accessible to non-coders, or at least I hope so.