"Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions."
- Albert Einstein

We are really excited about how transformative the ideas presented here will be. The notion that a single ecosystem would be all a developer needs to know to create on current and future platforms across all tiers of the software stack is spellbinding, because most of us are in a constant state of trying to remain relevant.

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But we can't do it alone.

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Development Today

Few professions, if any, require more diligence than software development to keep up with the latest changes in a trade. Not long ago, a developer could learn one language, one platform, one part of the stack and feel comfortable with that being enough for job security. And certainly that is still the case for some today, but not the vast majority of developers.

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The explosion of platforms and technologies over the past two decades has significantly changed the demands of the job. Most of us need to know one or more languages, platforms, frameworks and stack tiers to do our job. Full-stack development is so common today, in fact, that a cottage industry of full-stack boot camps has blossomed.

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There are many powerful and exciting tools available today to help simplify development:

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• If you need to code web pages but want a stronger type-system than natively offered by JavaScript, you can use TypeScript, which transpiles to JavaScript.

• If you are writing a web-service in Python or Java, for instance, that accesses a database, you may use an ORM to bridge the impedance mismatches.

• If you want to use a single code base and framework to do mobile development, you could use Xamarin's tools.

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The goals of these excellent tools are incrementally-focused, meaning they are not attempting to holistically rethink the development process from end-to-end, side-to-side, but to make a certain portion of the process easier.

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Our goal is different. And this is where imagination comes in handy.

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Our Approach

We started with a blank sheet of paper and began trying to understand what the underlying common elements were of software development, and what the ideal ecosystem would be to allow you to be most productive. During our field research, you told us what you liked and what was frustrating about development and our profession.

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In working through ideas, surprisingly, the main challenge was unlearning; decades of experience tends to ingrain one's approaches. But after hundreds of failed experiments, reams of notes and dozens of interviews, the elements emerged.

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After feeling as though we had a good grasp of these universal building blocks, it was then a question of defining the developer's experience. Ultimately, we elected to make the ecosystem feel as familiar as possible to you, though never compromising the fundamental mechanisms. This approach allows you to be productive quickly, regardless of your skill level, buts helps keep you from limiting growth options.

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Frog, the ecosystem's language, is easy enough for beginning developers to learn, on par with Java, C#, Swift and Python. They will find the visual aspect of Frog helpful. Expert developers will find Frog to be replete with advanced features allowing no-compromise, high-performance coding.

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Always Open Source or Free

Lesarde is a self-funded start-up. Open sourcing our technology is key to our business model using the permissive free Apache 2 license and will apply to the majority of what we create. Lesarde Studio, which is propriety, will always have a free, full-featured Community Edition.

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This seems to be the sweet spot that gives developers freedom and power and allows us sponsor the open source projects and innovate.

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Social Activism

Lesarde has social activism woven into its business model. There are countless way to help our world and all it's inhabits, great and small. For instance, as a tech company dedicated to creating development tools that lower the barrier of entry to our field, we will be uniquely positioned to help train those who might otherwise not have means to learn.

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We Need You

This project is in its infancy and your participation is critical to success. Any skill level, any amount of time, any field of interest is beneficial.

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Check out the Contributing page to find out more. All you have to bring is enthusiasm and imagination!

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Tom Dowdell

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