I haven't done a tech post for a while so here goes...
Google launched their App Engine project about a year or so ago and have just launched support for Java. I've always been a fan of Java & mySQL as it has always been up to the task with any problem I wanted to solve. Here are my thoughts on how this stacks up.
It rocks... I had to download the latest version of Eclipse and then install the Google plugin for App Engine. I followed the demo app and was up and running in the cloud in less that 30 minutes with a site working off my own domain. I can deploy a new version of an app in a matter of seconds.
In another 30 minutes I've learnt the basics of how to use JDO (persistance) and now can start thinking about building a scalable web app. Using servlets is very straight forward and with JDO I think the amount of code you need to write is pretty minimal, basically you can just focus on the task at hand.
The dashboard in App Engine looks pretty good so you can see exactly what's going on.
It will be interesting to see how many others choose App Engine to be their platform of choice. I think for a startup that wants to get something up and running quickly and not to have to worry about hosting costs initially this is a really viable option. Nice work Google.
