The History of AppleScript (PDF)

Fascinating 37-page paper on the history of AppleScript, written in 2006 by one of AppleScript’s original creators, William R. Cook. If you’ve ever wondered why AppleScript is the way it is, this is the best explanation I’ve ever seen.

News to me is that Apple originally developed an alternative “Professional” dialect, wherein this bit of English AppleScript:

the first character of every word whose style is bold

could be written like this in the Professional dialect:

{ words | style == bold }.character[1]

What a shame they abandoned that.

★ Monday, 21 July 2008