Google App Engine Account for ADC Participants

[Hong Ji]

 

Consider there are so many client/server Android applications, is it a good idea for all the ADC participants to receive the Google App Engine account invitations asap or at least to be included in the next 10,000 invitations?

 

Also, it will be great to see Java supported on Google App Engine (http://code.google.com/appengine/).

 

 

[Michael Rueger]

Forget it, Python is the new language du jour...
Java is so last millennium...

The next Android SDK version will probably be in Python too, that's why
it takes so long and they never care to fix critical bugs in the Java
version ;-)

Michael

[tu]

All the ADC participants can get the Google App Engine  account invitations is a good idea!

 

PS: I think java will still grow abd boom at least 10 years.

 

2008/4/29 Michael Rueger <mike....@gmail.com>:

[tu]

2008/4/29 tu <tuche...@gmail.com>:

[efon...@gmail.com]

Our team is on the list now, but this sure would be a good way to run
phase 2. Especially if they supported the Android java set so
customers could treat it as the always on always running extension of
their phone software.

On Apr 29, 7:30 am, tu <tuchengy...@gmail.com> wrote:
> 2008/4/29 tu <tuchengy...@gmail.com>:

>
>
>
> > All the ADC participants can get the Google App Engine  account
> > invitations is a good idea!
>
> > PS: I think java will still grow abd boom at least 10 years.
>

> > 2008/4/29 Michael Rueger <mike.rue...@gmail.com>:

>
> > > Hong Ji wrote:
>
> > > > Consider there are so many client/server Android applications, is it a
> > > > good idea for all the ADC participants to receive the Google App
> > > Engine
> > > > account invitations asap or at least to be included in the next 10,000
> > > > invitations?
>
> > > > Also, it will be great to see Java supported on Google App Engine
> > > > (http://code.google.com/appengine/).
>
> > > Forget it, Python is the new language du jour...
> > > Java is so last millennium...
>
> > > The next Android SDK version will probably be in Python too, that's why
> > > it takes so long and they never care to fix critical bugs in the Java
> > > version ;-)
>

> > > Michael- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

[Incognito]

What does python give me that Java doesn't? Just curious.

[John P.]

oh man, that opens up a can of worms. There will be those who say
that they're all the same at the assembly level, so no use arguing
which language is better or not. These will be those who say they can
write "Hello World" program in python in 5 lines as opposed to Java's
10 lines. There will be those who say they like python's scope
resolution by indention instead of curly braces. Then there will be
those who disclaim both languages because they're both interpreted as
opposed to C/C++'s compiled.

But here's the bottom line. You can drink Java but Python is much
harder to digest.

[Kevin Galligan]

Yeah. That is basically a "tastes great/less filling" argument.

(for those of you too young, google "youtube tastes great less
filling". Its an old beer commercial)

Python isn't exactly "new", by the way. According to wiki, its 4
years older than Java (91 vs 95). A counter argument that one might
have is that if Python was going to take over the world, it would have
already ;)

Light that match...

[Incognito]

Then I guess there is no reason for me to switch from Java to Python
then. The benefits of using Java as opposed to C, or C++ are very
clear to me. This is my own personal opinion so it may not apply to
everybody.

C - This is not an object oriented language. You have to manage your
own memory. A misplaced comma will drive the compiler crazy and you
will spend hours trying to find why your program is not compiling.

C++ - This one is better than C because it has a lot of object
oriented features. You still have to do your own memory management.
Compiler can be just as crazy. It was good while Java was not here but
not anymore, at least not for me.

Java - Is fully object oriented. It has a garbage collector. It has
the best IDE I've ever used , Eclipse. When there is a sintax error I
know exactly where the problem is. It has the best API documentation
system. To me this is enough to stick with Java.

Unless a new language goes above and beyond what Java can already do,
i.e. Make it easier and faster to write high quality real world
programs, I don't see the benefit of switching.

[John P.]

ok, here's my serious opinion.

Python, like PERL, is 100% interpreted. It's also a dynamically typed
language. The syntax is simpler (e.g. open(fileName) vs new
BufferedReader(new FileReader(fileName))). For these reasons, it is
very suitable for short scripts on the fly. There is OO for Python
(classes), but I haven't use it personally so I can't tell how it
scales.

Java is compiled into bytecodes and interpreted by the VM -- although
Eclipse's auto compile makes it seem like you don't have to compile.
I agree that Java has well documented API. For large programs, I
think Java is more scalable.

C/C++ is great for getting a handle on specific OS features, which
Java can't support because it has to support the lowest common
denominator. But this also blesses us with various compiler specific
features.

As Kevin said, Python is not new. It is pretty popular in the Google
community -- checkout the dev job descriptions on Google. Python is a
plus, along with the standard C++/Java.

[Kevin Galligan]

Try groovy. Its biggest problems are as follows:

1) Name. Sounds like a joke.
2) Everybody associates it with Grails. Blah.
3) IDEs are taking their time to come around (although I believe Idea
now does automatic imports, which was the deal killer for me).

Its built on top of Java, has a syntax that is very similar to Java.
Interacts back and forth directly with Java, so you can write Java and
Groovy right next to each other. Has closures and all sorts of other
fancy stuff the RTT* languages have, and is optionally typed.

that last part completely evaporates any perceived benefit that a RTT
language (Ruby, Python, etc) would have. You can specify your types,
and get the type checking and IDE features (code completion, etc), but
you don't have to.

I can't speak to Groovy's performance compared to other RTT languages.
It does have an abstraction layer in front of everything, including
numbers, so number intensive apps get killed. However, since you can
call back and forth between groovy and java classes, you just
re-implement whatever stuff is absolutely time critical.

I think Java 7 is going to try to implement some of the stuff that
Groovy has, like closures, and get close enough that people aren't
going to jump on it. That's unfortunate. I think the combo of the
two, as first class citizens, would be great. Code in Groovy if you
want something more "scripty", then switch right to java for the other
stuff.

* RTT - Run Time Typed. I don't say "dynamic" because the word
implies better. Try it. Ask a non-tech buddy what is better.
Dynamic or static. Guess what the answer will be. Ask the same
person if "run time" is better than "compile time".

[Michael Rueger]

On 4/29/08, Incognito <andro...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> What does python give me that Java doesn't? Just curious.

you might have missed the sarcasm? ;-)

Michael

[Michael Rueger]

On 4/29/08, John P. <johnny...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> oh man, that opens up a can of worms. There will be those who say
> that they're all the same at the assembly level, so no use arguing
> which language is better or not. These will be those who say they can

That is called Turin complete for those who actually listened in CS classes ;-)

btw, I've been doing Smalltalk since it existed...
Still going strong :-)

Now that is opening a can of worms ;-)

Michael

[Incognito]

> On 4/29/08, Incognito <androidf...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > What does python give me that Java doesn't? Just curious.
>
> you might have missed the sarcasm? ;-)
>
> Michael

Completely. There are people that still swear that all programs should
be written in C.

On Apr 29, 5:45 pm, "Michael Rueger" <mike.rue...@gmail.com> wrote:

[kdavis95139]

Forget the argument between OO and procedure oriented. Each has
certain advantages and any embedded programmer who has created a state/
event jump table in assembly or C knows this.

I've programmed in C practically since it was invented, Smalltalk
almost since it was invented, Java and Jscript and I am not that
impressed with the way OO has gone in general.

The time you save on one hand is wasted on the other (but I won't go
any further down that road)

And to judge a language because it has a really cool IDE or build
environment kinda misses the point. Although, after working with
ClearCase I completely understand the sentiment. And no doubt Eclipse
has some mighty fine features! (and a few bugs)

The whole "intent" with the OO movement was to reduce code replication
and spend more time designing and less time coding. It's almost like
we invented a scalable language with only 26 characters that we could
place in limitless combination to form words and then trashed that
deciding that using a different yet similar chinese symbol for every
word was a better idea because it took up less space on the screen. Or
maybe going back to the Roman number system is a slightly better
example.

So yes I am one of those guys who would much rather work with a really
good set of object or function libraries and program in my simplistic
C or even C++. But the better idea is to have a graphically based
(even object oriented) code generator that allows you to drag and drop
widgets where you want them, allows you to create a database by adding
fields to a table with a few parameters and generates 99 percent of
the code allowing you to attach single threads to an object or
procedure or field entry.

Not trying to offend anyone but I just am kinda dissappointed that my
craft has become somewhat of a commodity and I still can't tell
HAL2000 how I want the screen to look after 30 years but I still need
to speak to him 20 different ways to get anything done :) Was it Job
Security? Or just some smart guys wanting to sell more books?

On Apr 29, 3:16 pm, Incognito <androidf...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > On 4/29/08, Incognito <androidf...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > >  What does python give me that Java doesn't? Just curious.
>
> > you might have missed the sarcasm?  ;-)
>
> > Michael
>
> Completely. There are people that still swear that all programs should
> be written in C.
>
> On Apr 29, 5:45 pm, "Michael Rueger" <mike.rue...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > On 4/29/08, Incognito <androidf...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > >  What does python give me that Java doesn't? Just curious.
>
> > you might have missed the sarcasm?  ;-)
>

[Kevin Galligan]

I've been slack on the groovy as of late.

1.5 is out, with a joint compiler, plus some other interesting stuff.
Seriously. If you're a Java person and feel like you need to look at
the "dynamic" languages...

http://www.infoq.com/articles/groovy-1.5-new

I wrote some crazy under the hood stuff with it last year. Using the
meta class info and whatnot. Its nice.

[Kevin Galligan]

Dude. People talk like that. You never know.

[Gothy]

Well, I've got one so I want more :)
It would be great if ADC winner will get more from GAE for free(more
than standard free account includes)
But in fact, GAE misses lots of functionality which developers need,
hope it will change to better.

[Muthu Ramadoss]

GAE will be useful to the majority of the developers when it starts its support for PHP and Java. Until then we wait.

--
take care,
Muthu Ramadoss.

http://mobeegal.in
find stuff closer.

[Hong Ji]

While waiting for the GAE account in the recent weeks, I have been reading and learning the Python and also the GAE datastore API. For the application I have in mind, I would rather code the application/business logic level code in Java.

Python is at least good for creating web pages. But not all applications heavily use web pages as user interfaces. The example here is that the user can interact with the server through an Android application from a mobile phone.

One little point on the code readability, I prefer to use "private" to indicate a method is private instead of the "__" as the starting of the method name.

[Muthu Ramadoss]

Hong,

__ is this optional or mandatory? Do they don't have 'private' keyword at all?

[Hong Ji]

__ seems to be the only way to declare a method private. No other way is mentioned in the book Dive into Python which I am going through.

On the other hand, it may cause more confusions if it is optional.

[Muthu Ramadoss]

Glad we're not diving into Python. Nothing against Python per se, but need to think about setting up the team, and bring everyone upto speed etc.,