Wakanda's first public release for developers

Peter Dinham
Wednesday, 15 June 2011 21:55

Business IT - Open Source

The first public version of  the Wakanda open source platform for developing web applications using just JavaScript has now been made available to software developers by global software group 4D.

4D Australasia managing director, Damon Carley, said today that the developer preview version of Wakanda was still not in its final form, but the company had  released its first public version to invite developers to 'check it out, to be critical, alert us of the faults and make suggestions for its evolution into a finished product.'

'Every newborn needs a family, so we encourage developers to participate in the forum, and eventually in the open source community. It's taking baby steps, so we ask developers to be gentle and not throw it into the workforce right away,' Carley said.

The preview version of Wakanda can now be downloaded by software developers from http://wakanda.org/download.

According to Carley, Wakanda is designed to appeal to software developers who build web applications, typically for business. 'The product's emphasis is on the rapid development of web applications that have a rich interface and are easy to maintain. The benefit for developers is reducing the time and lowering the cost of developing and supporting web applications by using just JavaScript.'

Carley says that JavaScript provides a single language in the full Wakanda stack, from server to browser, making it easy to both develop and maintain an application.

'As well as building web applications, the Wakanda platform lets developers create HTML pages for desktop, mobile or tablet PCs, with widgets that are adapted for the 'touchscreen' environment.'

Carley also said that for the past two years, 4D had backed a separate, young development team to 'build this innovative application development platform.'

4D Australasia Managing Director Damon Carley said the Developer Preview version of Wakanda was still not in its final form. 'It's taking baby steps, so we ask developers to be gentle and not throw it into the workforce right away,' he advised.

'We've released this first public version to invite developers to check it out, to be critical, alert us of the faults and make suggestions for its evolution into a finished product. Every newborn needs a family, so we encourage developers to participate in the forum, and eventually in the open source community we hope to build around Wakanda as the project continues its development.'

And, for the record, Carley says that although it shares its name with the country from which the character Black Panther hails in the Marvel comic book universe, the name for the Wakanda software actually comes from the Native American Sioux word that describes the "inner magic" that's in everything.