Just finished launching another software service, so have had little time to write up this weeks posts. This one has taken several months and it came out of beta and open to the general user community today. It’s Java on AWS. Perhaps another series of posts beckons; once I’ve finished the ones I promised last week of course.
For “suits”, Excel is the gaffer tape of the business world. For a long time Apache Ant was the gaffer tape of the Java development world. It was great and I actually looked forward to writing yet another build.xml file. I did switch to maven for a while, but my heart wasn’t in it. Since switching to Google App Engine and Amazon Web Services, I’ve found that I haven’t touched a build.xml file for years (CruiseControl not withstanding). When you don’t need the gaffer tape anymore, it means that someone has fixed the problem.
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I’ve got so many personal projects at the moment, I’m a little bit overloaded. It’s time to commit and follow through. Late last night I committed to doing two things. Firstly, get one project off the ground and secondly to blog about it. More about the project in the next few posts and probably more importantly, why I’ve decided to give Google App Engine one last go. I still have a number of apps running on Google App Engine and they continue to tick over, but it’s time to do a full run down of the benefits and costs. This project is going to help me do that and hopefully provide some valuable feedback to the wider Google App Engine developer community. The project will touch on most of the GAE API (Java only I’m afraid) and will integrate with a number of external services, including Facebook and Paypal. It’s time for me to find out if GAE has legs.
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I once had a long discussion with one of my respected colleagues regarding java web frameworks and the high level of bloat that they commonly contain. Why ruin a good thing with less than useful extensions. I want something that is small but perfectly formed. For some time after I was beginning to suspect my age was to blame for my disinterest in these shiny new toys. Old dogs and new tricks. However, I’m please to say I think I’ve found just what I’ve been looking for and as a result my senior moment can be put behind me. For the moment, at least.
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I’ve been away from the blog for quite sometime. It would seem that I need to take 6 months (or more) to re-energise my blogging batteries. My thanks to all who continued to read in my absence. I hope I can repay your commitment but finding my own. So here I am returning from an incredibly busy period of my life. I return to Google App Engine having moved on significantly and having gained a good deal of experience with Amazon Web Services. I feel a compare and contrast post coming on. That’s right, I did move over to AWS for a while, but fear not I have flip flopped back to the mighty GAE and will be very happy to tell you why.