I went ahead and posted this comment on the blog post. It'd be great to be able to at least have a sandbox to build a library for communicating with the API to test out libraries and clients under development. Without something like that, I really don't see open, robust client libraries being built, and driving adoption in applications and around the web.

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I'm surprised that no one has said this yet, so I'll step up.

This is massively expensive.

Releasing an API without offering developers any way to build client libraries for Ruby, Python, and other languages short of ponying up $60 to test their client (or even offering a sandbox for sample data) is a bit much.

I'd be interested in putting together a Ruby library for interfacing with Alpha that would abstract the work of creating a request and parsing the response, making integration a snap for other developers and enabling deeper integration with Alpha around the web. I've thought a bit about how that might look, too:

  query = WolframAlpha::Query.new(:query => '7.5 parsecs in light years')
  response = query.execute

  response.pods.keys.map(&:title)
  => ['Input Interpretation', 'Result', 'Additional Conversions', 'Comparison as distance', 'Interpretations,' 'Corresponding Quantity']

  response.pods['Result']
  => '24.5 light years'

But with such a strong financial disincentive to develop for the platform, it's not likely that I'll register as a developer to create something like this. Feel free to contact me if terms change.