Google App Engine

There was a time, not so long ago, that I greeted every new Microsoft release with happiness and wonder. "How do they do it?" I would ask. "These guys are geniuses!" I would exclaim. I remember learning MFC for the first time and ATL, both were as exciting as a Christmas morning. Microsoft understood what developers needed and Microsoft was there to deliver it. To this day I tell people I owe my software career to Bill Gates and the Microsoft attitude of making things great for all developers, not just for those with huge amounts of money to spend.

I moved into the Java space just as .Net 1.0 came out. This wasn't because of Microsoft or .Net, it was because of customer demand. I still love Microsoft, but those days of wonder and excitement have passed (at least for now).

Yesterday I felt that same old feeling. I was sitting in the Las Vegas airport, waiting for a red eye when I learned that I had missed something quite huge. The release of Google App Engine.

What's so cool?

In a nut shell, Google App Engine is a way for developers to write applications without worrying about the deployment of those applications. You write the application, using the Google SDK (which runs locally, not on the Net) and you deploy those application in the Google App space. The Google App space takes the place of Apache, JBoss, MySQL, etc. running on your own hardware. In addition, Google offers a number of API's, including Data and authentication (using Google accounts like GMail).

Google's goal is to make application development faster, easier to deploy, and automatically scalable. I've only started working with the SDK, so I can't speak as to how good a job they've done so far, but it's definitely like Christmas morning again.

Check out Dave Winer's article on CNet or the Google App engine site itself for more info.