Edwin sez,

I've been using Runtime Revolution's Livecode for over a decade. It's sort of like Hypercard on steroids. It uses the same concepts – stacks with cards, interface elements that you drag around, resize, natural language code that makes sense when you read it and so on, but updates all of this to incorporate modern stuff like interwebs and mobile devices. Once you have written something you can easily pop out executables for Mac, Linux, PC, Ios or Android without a major porting effort. There's even a server version that works like php, but using language that doesn't make my head hurt.

Anyway, while I've been using this for years to automate all sorts of tasks, designing my own web-page generating apps and creating game prototypes, I have not been able to unreservedly recommend it to friends that would like to experiment with it because of the cost.

That could change though because the company behind Livecode has a Kickstarter up to create an open source version of Livecode with many improvements over the current closed version. From what I am seeing on the kickstarter the only difference between the future open source version and the future closed version is the licensing – if you pay for the closed version you won't have to share your code.

I am very excited about this – Livecode is probably the easiest to use development environment around and it makes introducing programming to kids and less-technical-but-creative friends a real joy. I am certain that having this out in the wild would make the world a better and weirder place, so I am supporting it. I think that anyone interested in increasing the number of people that can write their own applications should do so too.