I came across this post and its probably good if I tell you more about who we are and what we are about.
So I'm David Pratt, co-founder of CoastalForge, the company behind TideKit. I'm developing TideKit from the first hour.
Before TideKit, we developed TideSDK, a desktop solution that allows you to develop apps using JavaScript for Windows, Mac and Linux.
We are deep programmers and professionals in a variety of languages along with strong UX experience. We work to bridge native languages and operating systems with a unified API for JavaScript.
With TideSDK, we became an affiliate project of a non-profit under Software in the Public Interest with the likes of Debian, Drupal, ArchLinux, Postgres etc. While TideSDK is now aging, people continue to use it world wide.
TideSDK allows you to use PHP, Python and Ruby in a JavaScript context providing direct access to libs in these languages if you needed functionality not available in JavaScript. TideSDK was our start, what brought our team together and the credibility we bring to TideKit.
TideKit will retain these characteristics and allow folks that have software developed using TideSDK to migrate to TideKit.
TideSDK in open source was difficult since it is complex software and needed full time effort to develop. We had difficulty in attracting more talent to the project due to the variety of low level languages and deeper code base.
That said, we wanted more than a desktop SDK and had a broader vision for how to achieve ubiquity on all devices. We wanted to make it possible to write your sources once in JavaScript and deploy for mobile, web, and desktop.
In late 2012, we decided to move forward with TideKit as a commercial solution.
We are currently close to delivering the results and we've been building up our infrastructure and assets to deploy it. We are a small but tightly connected international team and we work (more than) full time hours to push ahead each day. Because we are spread around the world, development proceeds 24 hours a day.
As a result, we've got a significant investment in our technology to date and have developed a very large code base for TideKit itself and manage large number or repos for module and componentry to work with it. We currently run approximately 30 servers between our development and platform infrastructure.
We opened reservations as a way for those interested in our efforts to be the first to access TideKit when it releases.
In some respects, it is a crowd funding effort. Our customers are our investors with a vested interest in what we will deliver. We understand our role, and the trust that is placed in us. That's why we're facing every question, we have nothing to hide.
What we offer is an Early Bird and a Pioneer Plan that get earliest access and 30 days to test and try everything TideKit has to offer. The Pioneer level gives folks a bit more since they will also get an interactive Q&A with our developers and the first look at the product.
We know that we haven't said much about the technology, and how the platform works in detail. We are delayed on our timing, and of course we also want to change this.
We will launch our blog next week, and will begin writing about, and then demonstrating our technology. Next steps will be revealing our TideKit App, CLI, build services, docs and developer site. A lot to come.
We've spent time to put up a decent site and a video. Both of these will go through further transformations prior to our launch. You will not only see high quality resources, but detailed, helpful resources coming from us and we invite your feedback on improvements as we go forward.
Last spring, we introduced TideKit at TiConf in Baltimore. We let developers know what we are doing, why we are doing it and where we are headed. We're attempting to change the way we develop apps. The presentation is available on Slideshare at and on Vimeo.
Today, in order to develop mobile, web and desktop means developing multiple times, with different tools and SDKs. We are trying to improve that.
What TideKit means to us (and what we want it to mean to you) is that you can deploy and monetize on virtually every platform from a single effort. We think it is worth the investment, and are excited to show you what we have.
Some might think us crazy for taking on something as large as this, or even think it's impossible, but we'll demonstrate HTML5, hybrid and native apps created from a single source of code, built and packaged using our build services for deployment and distribution.
It's healthy to be skeptical, but or team consists of like-minded developers that want to change the channel on how to develop for multiple platforms. We are walking the walk now for quite some time.
In the end, we all know only seeing is believing. So we'll show you.