Stagecast Creator

Stagecast Creator is a visual programming language intended for use in teaching programming to children. It is based on the programming by demonstration concept, where rules are created by giving examples of what actions should take place in a given situation. It can be used to construct simulations, animations and games, which run under Java on any suitable platform.

What is today known as Creator originally started as a project by Allen Cypher and David Canfield Smith in Apple's Advanced Technology Group (ATG) known as KidSim. As the name implies, it was intended to allow kids to construct their own simulations, reducing the programming task to something that anyone could handle. Programming in Creator uses graphical rewrite rules augmented with non-graphical tests and actions.

In 1994, Kurt Schmucker became the project manager, and under him, the project was renamed Cocoa, and expanded to include a Netscape plug-in. It was also repositioned as "Internet Authoring for Kids", as the Internet was becoming increasingly accessible. The project was officially announced on May 13, 1996. There were three releases:

When Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, he began dismantling a number of non-productive departments. One of these was the ATG. Larry Tesler, Cypher, and Smith, left to form Stagecast Software after retaining the rights to the Cocoa system.

Apple went on to reuse the Cocoa name for the entirely unrelated Cocoa application framework, which had originated as OpenStep. Apparently due to time constraints—it was easier to reuse an already-registered name than to register a new term.

Creator is based on the idea of independent characters that have a graphical appearance and non-graphical properties. Each character has a list of rules that determine how it behaves. The rules are created by demonstrating what the character does in a specific situation. Each rule is a before / after rule, stating that when the before conditions of the rule are met, the after actions of the rule are performed.

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