Why would anyone not just learn a real programming language. The whole point of tilestack is to not discourage people when making applications who are afraid of programming but yet they still need to learn the syntax and semantics of Speak. Why not just learn a very high level language that abstracts the ideas that generally scare people away in the first place. Python, for instance, is very is to pick up. You might make the argument that it's much easier to learn Speak, but even if it takes twice as long to learn Python to do the equivalent of making a Stack with Speak, you can at least apply what you learned in many other places other than tilestack.com. Just seems pointless for people to waste their time learning something that only applies to a single website when they could learn something that they could use for many other applications.

Let me see if I can help you understand TileStack better. Here are some of the people we are creating TileStack for: a) those with little or no programming experience that want quick results; b) teachers that want to provide an easy learning environment for kids; c) people that want to prototype an idea or mockup an interface; d) organizations that want a single environment on which to create apps that can then be easily published to multiple web, mobile and desktop medium.

And there are many more that TileStack makes sense to. So while I appreciate the comments 'neh', comparing TileStack to Python is not much of a comparison. With TileStack, we take care of pretty much everything for you. You simple click "create a stack" and start building whatever is on your mind. Once you're done, you can share it with people across the net in minutes. Put a little more refinement on your idea and we'll help you turn your creation into a Facebook app or sell it on the Apple App Store, with even more options coming in the future!

Doing anything remotely similar with Python requires a whole heap of knowledge and a lot more than just Python programming skill. And while geeks like you and I relish in all the geekiness of learning those skills, many people would rather spend there energy creating what's on their mind.

In any case, it's true that we have yet to achieve the level of simplicity I want to see... but we're working on it and eventually TileStack won't require users to know much about 'Speak' at all. So stay tuned.

Honestly the Facebook and iPhone integration sounds awesome and I obviously wasn't aware of that. Makes a lot of sense for a teacher to give a high level overview of something without too much detail as well. Interface mock ups is a great idea. In my opinion those things should be advertised more and stacks or tutorial videos should be created to show the simplicity of that. Sounds awesome.

Also I was comparing the abstractions in Python and other higher level languages to TileStack (or I should say Speak) because that's what draws in new people who otherwise would shy away from the challenges of compiling, linking, ridiculous libraries, ugly debuggers, memory management, and the dreaded seg fault :P

I think you guys are doing great work I just didn't see the point at first. Thanks for the clarification and keep up the good work. AND SHOW ME HOW I CAN TURN A STACK INTO AN IPHONE APP! (sorry about the caps, don't call me oprah)

@neh if you look in the help section (click "Help" at the top) you'll see a bunch of tutorials on the left, one of them tells you exactly how to go about publishing your stacks to the app store. Or you can simply search the help right there for "iPhone" or "App Store".