An application system for the creation, deployment, and management of digital content assets is provided, for developing media-rich content and applications that have a simple architecture that is also comprehensive and extensible. In embodiments, a system for creating, sharing and managing digital content may include a visual editing environment that enables a developer to create and edit code controlling a digital content asset in a declarative language and a code execution engine that operates on the code created in the visual editing environment to control execution of at least one hardware infrastructure element that enables the utilization of the digital content asset, wherein the same declarative language and code execution engine are used during editing of the digital content asset and at runtime and wherein the visual editor and runtime code are compiled for distribution using LLVM.