Well, it was about time I learned a new language

[andrewducker]

I've had "play with Google App Engine" on my to-do list for a long time. It always seemed like the most sensible of the cloud programming systems. Amazon want to rent you whole PC instances by the minute (and I don't want to have to actually configure or manage an OS), Microsoft want to rent you a processor on an ongoing basis (and I just want to play with this stuff, I don't see it being used for more than seconds-minutes/day), but Google only want to charge you for the time your application is actually doing any work (and any bandwidth is uses) and don't make you faff around with anything apart from the actual code you want to run.

As I already know C#, and have played around with Java a bit, I figured that using Java on App Engine was the way forward. So I followed the instructions to start getting things set up, and then started looking at the tutorial. Which seemed ridiculously complex for doing the basics. Loading data looked like the kind of thing that would drive a person crazy. So I had a quick look at the Python equivalent and was able to wrap my brain around it with very little difficulty. Which makes me wonder why the Java version is so complicated.

But anyway, despite the itchy feeling that working without an IDE gives me, I've worked my way through the tutorial, puzzled over some basic syntax, and I think I've got the hang of the basics. It seems simple enough, I quite like the use of whitespace, and I'm now going to play around with some code of my own.

Once, that is, I've gone looking for a decent IDE that will, at the very least, point out when I've mispelled something, and preferably allow me to step through my code!

Comments

[cairmen.livejournal.com]

I'll be interested to hear how this goes.

[andrewducker]

See latest post :->

[lpetrazickis.livejournal.com]

I've been happy with PyDev in the past, but it might not do debugging of App Engine stuff.

[meico.livejournal.com]

So I had a quick look at the Python equivalent and was able to wrap my brain around it with very little difficulty. Which makes me wonder why the Java version is so complicated.

This is probably because Google prefers and is one of the main backers of Python...

[neuralbuddha.livejournal.com]

I use TextPad for a variety of things. It is basically a tremendously powerful and configurable text editor which allows you to set up a limited kinda-IDE for any text based language you like. (Among other features.) You do have to pay for it but (depending on your morals) I could send you a registration code.

[andrewducker]

We use TextPad in the office, and I have a copy at home that I'm going to register on the 15th (pay day). It is very handy - although it took me a while to realise that the keyboard shortcuts could be changed to the Windows standard ones, which made it a lot better. It's only about £15 for a single user license, and I'm perfectly happy to pay that.

I've not really got to grips with the power of TextPad - I get the feeling that it can do more than I'm currently using it for.

[neuralbuddha.livejournal.com]

My only wish is that you could also change the regular expressions to be Word standard as well, even though they're probably not as powerful. Also, a syntax file for the inbuilt syntax language would be useful, although you could of course write one yourself. Roll on syn.syn as a standard include!