Hang on let me pause my Creative Labs Nomad and finish this call on my Palm Treo so I can respond to your comment; oh wait...
Just because something is first doesn't mean it is best. Limor took something cool and made it awesome, and you can be sure that in a generation or two someone else will take her work further.
I grew up hacking on Heathkits and reading Forrest Mimms books and just as Mimms did for me as a child, Adafruit's products turn a new generation on to the fun, creativity and power locked up in understanding electronics.
The fact of the matter is that DIY electronics was fading out by the 1990's in no small part due to the ever tightening noose of proprietary technology and planned obsolecense in consumer electronics. In this environment, Adafruit was able to make soldering sexy and fabrication fashionable; how could anyone find fault in that?
We'll be taking this for a spin. I've been pushing for an API-driven site for awhile but the case for that model was cinched when we started adding non-web clients to our system.
A leaned-out Rails is a nice compliment to other bolt-on API options and fat GUI-based API builders. Personally I prefer to start with something even simpler, but the facts are you can cover more ground faster (and potentially safer) with something like this vs. building your HTTP stack from scratch.
The Hypermedia stuff is most exciting to me, as hand-rolling that is a hard-sell for many teams (if you have a system of any significant richness).
It was an attempt at humor (notice the sideways winky-face, an electronic communication method of conveying levity - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emoticon)
Just because something is first doesn't mean it is best. Limor took something cool and made it awesome, and you can be sure that in a generation or two someone else will take her work further.
I grew up hacking on Heathkits and reading Forrest Mimms books and just as Mimms did for me as a child, Adafruit's products turn a new generation on to the fun, creativity and power locked up in understanding electronics.
The fact of the matter is that DIY electronics was fading out by the 1990's in no small part due to the ever tightening noose of proprietary technology and planned obsolecense in consumer electronics. In this environment, Adafruit was able to make soldering sexy and fabrication fashionable; how could anyone find fault in that?