My two cents (as a Java dev): Pros:
- it's not complicated, you can do easy things in easy way (well maybe the Database can be tricky when you come from SQL world :-) - very easy and fast start of development (if you use simple stack as servlet + jsp + objectify) - for small projects its basically free - very easy deployment - very easy use of messaging as all is basically just async http request - it scales automatically - you don't need admin for db/app server and other stuff Cons: - you can't use usual frameworks aka Spring -> which means you spent a lot of time implementing basic features which are included in your framework (ie. Authentication, MVC, templating, Caching and so on) - I mean you can probably work it around and use some subset of frameworks or libraries but my experience tells me you will keep trying to find some hacks and workarounds instead focusing on real development and adding features (For example with spring you add @Cacheable annotations to method which will automatically use in-memory cache + propagate to memcache through ehcache (yes one line settings) - on GAE you will need to write it by yourself) - you don't have control over resources - when GAE a has bad day you can't do anything with it and you can just watch how it spins instances or fails when talk to db - and you usually don't get a word from google what is actually happening - it doesnt fit all type of projects - for example in my app I have a web front and then a backend business which was processing multi-threaded requests while was user browsing pages - the backend was done through tasks and it was killing the instance so I had to move that logic to AWS where it runs on micro instance with 0.1 load all the time very nicely (this was before google announced backends) - my frontend client facing app still runs on GAE and I haven't touched it for more than year and didn't have much issues even if its sits in MS datastore :) - it can be expensive (you need to optimize sooner) - I was usually optimizing after getting more hits and so but on GAE you sometime needs to optimize in advance because it just consumes a lot of resources (ie. reads/writes/indexes to db) - something is just not going to work at all and you will need to find alternative (ie. reading from local drive etc) On Friday, 3 August 2012 21:37:36 UTC+12, Levi Campbell wrote: > > I'm building a startup, and I'm considering GAE as the platform, however > I've been having a hard time finding information on why a startup might > consider GAE instead of the many cloud providers out there. Let me explain > what I'm working on. > > I'm a big fan of David Allen's Getting Things Done: The Art of > Stress-Free > Productivity<http://www.amazon.com/Getting-Things-Done-Stress-Free-Productivity/dp/0142000280/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1343984264&sr=8-1&keywords=Getting+things+done>, > > and after trying several tools and online services that (claim to) > implement the GTD methodology, I couldn't find anything that I loved, so I > decided to build my own and make it available as a SaaS offering. This app > will allow users to pull in their info_crap from email, facebook, twitter > (and yes, I do have plans to add support for more social networks.), and > RSS feeds and organize it by relationship to the sender (i.e. family, > work colleague, vendor, and the like), project (i.e. planning a family > vacation.), and context (Either the when or where something should > happen.).\ > > Would GAE be a good fit for the application I'm developing? Why? > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Google App Engine" group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/google-appengine/-/ZEN0vvWzcUQJ. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/google-appengine?hl=en.
