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If you’re reading this, you might be curious about a few things. First, who or what is Wakanda? And second, why are we writing an “open letter” to the dev community?

Let’s start with a little background: In 2010, Laurent Ribardière (CEO of 4D, the company he founded in 1984) had an intuition about the relationship between web/app development and enterprises. He quickly realized that companies must simplify and rationalize their development process for cross-channel apps if they want to consolidate their strategy for deploying professional business apps. He saw the potential of JavaScript as a standard language for creating digital projects and thus had the foresight of unifying front and back-end technologies around JavaScript to offer developers the means to rapidly conceive, produce, and deploy high-performance apps. 5 years later, that vision transformed from an R&D lab project to its own independent subsidiary—Wakanda.

And to be honest, we’ve made some mistakes along the way. Our message could have been clearer. Our documentation could have been stronger. Our overall presence could have been better.

But that’s the great thing about the dev community—at our core we are problem solvers, solution-creators, and celebrate the value of trying and failing (more times than we care to admit) knowing the answer is just around the corner.

So why are we writing this? Through our engagement with you, we discovered your desire for us to be more transparent with you. So here’s the deal… We are in a critical season in our development and we want to partner with you as we grow into a technology that enterprises (large and small) and developers (novice and experienced) can use at their disposal.

What have we done to create a better experience for our developers and enterprises?

  • Brand new “Getting Started” page
  • Improved website and documentation, with developers in mind
  • Increased blogs to enhance community and education
  • Increased social media presence
  • Educational tutorials (coming soon)
  • Sponsorships at various conferences around the world

So friend to friend, what are we asking? All we are asking is for you to put your developer “learning hat” on, download our free community version, play around with platform, and give us your feedback.

We are super excited for this release – Our 2.0 version allows you to code your Backend in Wakanda SSJS and extend it using the new Nodeworker API. Our JavaScript abstraction layer is now provided for our built-in DB, external DBs, and web services. You can also connect to MSSQL or any other DBs through our new connector. Your Data Model is autogenerated in a JavaScript Abstract Layer.

Test it out and see for yourself. We believe in the power of community and know that with your help and feedback, we can improve to be the go-to open-source JS platform for rapid app development.

Regards,

Wakanda

To learn more and play with our latest platform version, head over to our Getting Started page here: http://wakanda.github.io/get-started/