Expecting Rain

Wow, the Java/Groovy request is really gaining momentum over on the Google App Engine Issue list. This is now the number 1 request with the Ruby request ranking 2nd. Perl, an early leader has really dropped today coming now in 4th place.

I have no idea why this fascinates me so, but it really does. Perhaps it gives me a touch on the pulse of desired programming languages in this realm.

It isn't a surprise to me that at this writing Ruby is the number 1 user requested feature on the Google App Engine Feature/Issue tracker.

Whether or not Ruby has the largest user base for this type of environment or just the loudest is hard to determine. I've starred the Ruby feature as well as the Erlang request, which isn't doing very well. As I mentioned earlier (felt like that was a play on words with Erlang) I expect Ruby to be one of the first if not the first language brought on. As well, I just don't think that Erlang for the reasons using their processes will be brought into the stack.

If Erlang is made available, I can only think it will be a very stripped down version that lacks most of what make Erlang relevant to me. I don't have a problem with this as the theory is that App Engine is handling what I would have to code for in Erlang anyway.

If you feel passionately about a particular language or feature for App Engine, head over to the issue tracker and make your vote known. There is no guarantee that these issues will be granted by Google, but I can't help but think that they will be seriously considered if enough people are voting for them.

Recently Flickr increased their feature set to include uploading and storing of video content. This upgrade in feature set has left some Flickrs quite angry. (Additional article providing some insight to this here.)

One argument presented by Flickr users is that currently, Flickr is a photography sight dedicated to photography and photographers.

"We the undersigned members of Flickr, free and pro, agree that video has no place on Flickr. Other sites on the web accept video already, but do not accept photos. We all joined Flickr because of it's dedication to photography and photographers, and we want Flickr to remain true to this dedication. It is our request that this feature and addition to Flickr be removed."

As such, expanding it takes away from the experience and the community. Whether I agree with that or not, it has been my experience that adding features sometimes dilutes your product leaving it less focused at accomplishing the tasks that may have made it very popular. Whether or not this will happen with Flickr remains to be seen as on the other hand, sometimes additional features are what you need to stay on top.

Twitter seems to be facing a similar dilemma. As it currently stands, Twitter is a very focused application with the aim of delivering very short (140 characters) text based messages for users to users. There have been requests to expand their feature set to include payloads. As of yet, this request hasn't been granted. However, other services such as Pownce have filled this niche. I have memberships at both. I use twitter much more often than Pownce. I'm not sure if it is the simplicity of Twitter that attracts me, or the user base. Either way, it will be worth tracking.

To me, Google App Engine is also occupying the space of limited feature set, they offer web application hosting. Amazon EC2 seems to be at the opposite end of the spectrum, they offer complete virtual computing. Due to these differences in scope, I do not feel that they are competing products. App Engine's goal is to provide a place to deploy your web app making it highly available. It will only host your web app. You can't currently store files although you do have data storage with Bigtable. I don't believe this will change. EC2's goals seems to be to provide a service to be able to scale your servers. Both are very simple feature sets although they may seem difficult at times. EC2 is virtual servers. Set them up as you may wish. App Engine is to provide a space for your application to run. I think each would struggle if they tried to accomplish both goals.

My personal opinion is that if you offer an application, decide what it should do and have it do it well. I am wary of expanding applications to handle increasing bigger feature sets. It makes them bloated and if you aren't careful they also become very difficult to use. I have written applications that have this problem. I try to avoid it but sometimes it is difficult to determine when a request will make the overall user experience more enjoyable, or open the road to increasing complexity and problems.

About

Google App Engine is a service that allows developers to deploy web apps that are then run on Google resources utilizing the expertise Google has in scalability and servers.

Language wishlist

Currently Google App Engine supports Python. There is speculation and hinting from Google that more languages will be added. It will be interesting to see which languages will be added first and which ones simply will not make the cut. Personally, I'm not surprised that Python is the flagship language, there has been well documented preference to Python from Google. (Random Google support page shows a .py extension indicating the Python language being used http://www.google.com/support/talk/bin/topic.py?topic=1186)

As it is little surprise that Python is currently supported, it leads to the question of which languages will be supported and in what order will languages be brought under the Google App Engine umbrella. My speculation is that Ruby will be the next language adopted followed by Perl. After that, I struggle to determine what will be logical. My personal wish list goes as follows:

1. Ruby


2. Erlang


3. Rhino


4. Java

In reality, I don't think Erlang will be brought on. I love the language, but I doubt it will be part of the App Engine stack. One of the major benefits of Google App Engine is the fact that Google is going to manage scalability for you. As a result of this control by Google they prohibit you from doing it yourself. Although used by a different name than threading, Erlang's processes would probably be out of the question as well.

What would I create

Honestly, I don't have an idea. I do not yet have an active account. (I hope that changes soon.) As I understand at first, developers are given 3 apps they can create and are unable to delete an app should they change their mind. In other words, choose carefully. If anyone has any suggestions for potential apps, please let me know.

Wrap up

While much more can be said, and has if you track appengine on twitter, that is all I'm going to say at this time other than my opinion. I do believe that Google App Engine is a very significant milestone in cloud computing. I believe it enables people who may have had limited resources but good ideas an opportunity to show the world what they can offer. I'm excited to see what happens.

The blogosphere has been quite active today talking about Google's App Engine. This activity has been a very interesting use case for twitter. Due to the newness of the App Engine I wondered how much good content would be available about on this subject. I determined that search engines probably wouldn't have scoured the web quickly enough to get all posts, so I turned to twitter. I used the command "track appengine" and found everything from short opinions, talk about apps, links to blogs, and apparently people showing off that they made it in the top 10,000. I'm not jealous, really I'm not. Buncha snobs anyway! ;)

• Google App Engine: History's Next Step or Monopolistic Boondoggle? - ReadWriteWeb
  (tagged as: appengine via:twitter)


• Early notes on GoogleApps (Scripting News) - Point 3 really hits the nail on the head.
  (tagged as: appengine)


• Experimenting with Google App Engine - Bret Taylor's blog - An actual application running on App Engine
  (tagged as: appengine via:twitter)


• Manageability - Has Google's AppEngine Annointed Python as the New Web Standard?
  (tagged as: appengine python via:twitter)


• Google: Cloud Control to Major Tom - ReadWriteWeb
  (tagged as: via:twitter appengine)


• Smashed Apples: Google AppEngine and PyAMF
  (tagged as: appengine via:twitter flex)


• Ajaxian » What does Google App Engine mean for Ajax developers?


• Getting things done (simply) in Leopard | Dennis Best

I'm posting an early link round up today, but there will be another to follow at the end of the day. The reason for the early post is I wanted to dedicate an individual post to Google's new Appengine that was released last night.

Apparently Appengine was made available for the first 10,000 individuals who signed up. At 6am, I'm on the waiting list. I'd be interested to know just how quickly it took to get 10,000 developers to sign up.

I think Appengine represents a significant milestone, one that I have been waiting for Google to do for quite some time now. We've had cloud computing available from Amazon.com, and I truly feel they paved the way for this. However, for any size deployment you pay. At Appengine, that isn't the case, they quote that it is free to get started:

Every Google App Engine application can use up to 500MB of persistent storage and enough bandwidth and CPU for 5 million monthly page views.

Suddenly, anyone with an idea for an online app can immediately begin prototyping their idea with relatively little overhead cost.

I do see a few drawbacks:

• Language availability - Currently only Python is supported. In the Appengine documentation, it states other languages may be added. link


• Pricing unknown - Currently, the pricing structure for going over the free user quota isn't made known to the public. Additionally, you aren't allowed to go over user quota without specifically making a request to Google. Until pricing is made known, I would be wary of putting all my eggs in this basket. However, knowing Google, I'd imagine pricing will be appropriate for the service provided.
  

Links:

• Official Google Blog: Developers, start your engines
  (tagged as: appengine cloud google google.services)


• YouTube - Developing and deploying an application on Google App Engine
  (tagged as: ap appengine Google videos)


• Google App Engine - Google Code - I've been wondering when this was going to come out.
  (tagged as: cloud google google.services)