SDK and API's - I like these things!

The other day in Twitter I saw Coté tweeting about a call with Appcelerator (no link or anything) and so I Google'd it and found them right off.

"The Appcelerator Platform is our flagship product. It's a next-generation, open source web platform that fundamentally changes the way rich Internet applications are developed. Here are some technical highlights about the Appcelerator Platform:"

(Via Appcelerator Platform RIA Developer Open Source Community.)

I then mentioned in Twitter how I was interested and Coty responded with a link to @jhaynie (founder/CEO) who promptly contacted me to let me know they are available if I have questions (I'd not even downloaded at this time).

Just checking out their site, this caught my eye "Since the Appcelerator Platform is message-based, you can create fully-functional RIAs without writing a single line of server code. This enables you to rapidly prototype new products and services and then use your prototype in the final product with 100% reusability (no throwaway code). Additionally, your Appcelerator Prototype will include the Messaging Interface required by your RIA, so service development will be a piece of cake."

Having it downloaded I decided to give it a look through, it's 1.8 MB on my disk a bit much, a closer look shows the "src" directory oh it's 1.8MB as well. Copy the directory to your server and run the "service tester" which quickly resulted in an immediate "I received your Hello World" - probably one of the first framework/kit or package that I was able run right off. No config, nice!

I played around for a few hours with it, building on top of a couple of test apps and such, it's quite impressive a bit complex but after some time as with most things I think it will work itself into the norm in terms of usage.

In terms of the options, amazing, great quality and a major time saver (once you get the hang of it) in building RIA applications on the web. The question of course is staying power, there are so many of these packages (although this one is truly unique I think) coming out how many are we going to see go under or fade out in the next 18 months?

This one has the entire messaging system which I think will be key to their survival, will be interesting to watch them!

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