i disagree with Dweezil. Python is slow. A lot of web applications developed in Python are sloooow. Witness Plone, Zope, etc. Even Google Apps is not fast. Compare it to Facebook or MediaWiki (both written by the 'retard' language PHP) and you will know the difference. Python sucks. Php, while it definitely isn't a 'clean' language, rocks. Of course, C/C++ is the fastest. Python is slooooow.

Lastly I wonder which self-respecting programmer would want to work under these constraints (unless Google opens up more):

(from Google Apps FAQ)
A small percentage of native C python modules, and subsets of native C python modules are not available with Google App Engine. A full list detailing native C Python module support can be found here. The disabled modules fall in to the following categories:

* Libraries that maintain databases on disk are not enabled in Python for Google App Engine
* Sockets are disabled with Google App Engine
* The system does not allow you to invoke subprocesses, as a result some os module methods are disabled
* Threading is not available
*
* For security reasons, most C-based modules are disabled
* Other features that are limited:
o marshal is disabled
o cPickle is aliased to pickle
o System calls have been disabled

Please keep in mind that third party packages which use any of the above features will not function with Google App Engine (packages such as mysql, postgresql, etc).

ron_paulite

Dweezil

Dalejo wins this arguement for being much more entertaining.

smncameron

We can, however, sit around and comment on blogs all day. 1/2 ain't bad.

@dalejo: I guess that's debatable, but to be fair all I've dealt with hiring-wise over the last 2 years is ATS work and the random DBA. There's no way Java is the best possible first programming language for someone to learn, though.

Dweezil

dalejo

As for CS101 languages ... man up dude .. before you speak of what u do not know... see alice

Best regards...

Also, Oracle runs SimpleDB? Yikes ...

zabovo

If the first language someone learns and take to an advanced level is Java, Perl or PHP I immediately assume there is going to be a problem. If I deal with programmers it means that there is a situation where something they built has failed and is, as a result, hemorrhaging money--or it is antiquated and cannot be easily interpreted by new programmers/consultants who are complaining to me and is, as a result, hemorrhaging money. People who write Python, in my experience, write cleaner code that I can understand (no small feat), and as a result they get a leg-up in the hiring process. I'd like to see Python become the standard for beginning computer scientists (that or Scheme), not Java, because it produces better programmers.

Dweezil

dalejo

The documentation makes it clear that the plan is to make the entry level system free beyond the temporary limitation of 10,000 developers.

Amazon sells books (and stuff) and is diversifying, bless them for that, and Oracle powers zillions of applications that won't be convertable to this for almost that many years.

Who this threatens is Rackspace and the like who start raking in the dough from small companies and start-ups who haven't even invested in a cabinet for their letterhead stationary yet.

During the previous cycle in the 90s every Avon sales-lady could have her own personal business page with the help of Geocities and all the follow-ons. Problem with all the free stuff was that it was just static pages, maybe augmented by a free forum or something.

Now the sky is the limit as far as your concept goes. You could re-invent Facebook (God forbid) with this without laying out a dime for servers and the only time you have to start paying is when you have enough traffic to actually test your monetization scheme (if you are cluefull enough to have one).

Yes, it's true that this will make cherry-picking the good apps easier for Google, but nothing is stopping several other companies from doing a similar deal. Bigtable, which is Google's super-scaleable stand-in for SQL (and looks similar to it from a programming point of view) is already being cloned in Open Source. Microsoft and Amazon have their own clones already. You could write cover functions to mask the differences if you wanted to be portable, and as mentioned above the other components are all already Open Source. They'll support other languages than Python RSN (Real Soon Now).

The immediate "victims", as I said, are Rackspace and the like, although I don't expect them to close up shop any time soon.

If we are lucky though the thousands of other fly-by-night (mostly middle-men) hosting providers (who often sub-let from Rackspace) will find that old door to door Amway business that they put on the shelf once again an easier row to hoe.

This is getting a lot of amateurs out of the business of running (or pretending to run) data centers.

Thank you. Thank you very much.

macbeach

ScalaWag

hth

eot

Dweezil

Ted Dziuba

ScalaWag

A startup with the technical needs beyond that of Twitter is going to have a hard time finding Google App Engine useful.

Ted Dziuba

@plushmessiah: You are right about TV show comparison, but it would be very strange if a cable network had power to prevent you from taking your content elsewhere. Amazon lets you do it, Google tries to lock you in.

Amazon rocks, Google sucks.

ScalaWag

Dweezil

Filament

SFJoe

The_Age_of_Plastic

I don't care about this at all but the world would be a better place if we all used Python. Most PHP developers are retards and Ruby people can only program in Rails, thus Python is like the one ring of programming languages.

Dweezil

plushmessiah

matto

This looks like a proprietary system in a way that nothing written on it can run anywhere else. With Amazon if I do not like what I see I can anytime move code and data from their virtual servers to my own datacenter.

Sorry Google, no deal. Free cheese is only in the mousetrap. Take your Trojan Horse and stick it up your ass.

ScalaWag

Davion

sikantis