The reason why no one has been able to duplicate the success of HyperCard is that all of the contenders have focused solely on the attributes it had, rather than the ones it did not have - namely, the bloated, revolting, and limitless unnecessary complexity of today's programming environments.

An accomplished HyperCard user was justified in feeling like the "master of all he surveyed." Even trying to cultivate such a feeling in the users of "modern" computing systems is akin to building an amusement park on quicksand.