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IIRC, the mouse pointer turning into a hand when you mouse over something clickable was original to HyperCard. And I think Brendan Eich was under a heavy influence of HyperTalk when created JavaScript.

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JavaScript felt like it took the best parts of C (concise expressiveness) and the ease of use of HyperTalk (event handlers, easy hierarchical access to objects, etc). It was pretty sweet.

Wasn't the pointer always a hand in HyperCard?

Depended on context, and what the stack programmer set it to. Possibilities (per Fig. 51-1 in _The Complete Hypercard Handbook, 2nd edition_ were:

- watch

- busy

- hand

- arrow

- iBeam

- cross

- plus

And in turn, from the css2 spec:

https://www.w3.org/TR/WD-CSS2-971104/ui.html

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