On Fri, Feb 6, 2009 at 11:51 PM, David Stenglein <david.stengl...@gmail.com> wrote: > > I have to ask a question here. Why is there such reticence regarding > App Engine? It would > seem to me that App Engine has been a feather in the cap for Django. A > lot of people don't know Django and at a previous job, I was able to > say that "Google chose django" for App Engine to help validate my use > of it.
Reticence isn't a particularly accurate description of the situation. The Django Core developers are all volunteers, so our time is limited. We work on the things that scratch our particular itches. Speaking personally (and I suspect the same is probably true of the rest of the core developers), I don't have a lot of use for App Engine at the moment, and I have a lot of other pressing concerns, so I'm not spending a lot of personal time on the problem. For me, App Engine is in a similar camp to Python 3: a very interesting idea, but not a development priority _right now_. Given time, I expect this to change (commercial hosts will start providing Python 3 support/Google will take App Engine out of preview and into full release), but for the moment, I have a lot of other issues that affect me on a daily basis, and are therefore much more compelling for me to work on. That said, if Google (or anyone else, for that matter) wants to throw some engineers at addressing this issue, we will gratefully accept the assistance. We are in no way opposed to improving App Engine support. If a well designed, well written patch were to arrive on our doorstep today, I suspect you would find that patch in Django's trunk in short order. > It may be coincidental, but I thought that a regularized release > schedule (rather than just "use SVN") seemed to come about after the > App Engine announcement. This was complete coincidence. Our v1.0 timeline was decided upon independent of any App Engine announcement or plans. Google hasn't actively engaged the Django community to coordinate release plans, schedules, or feature lists. > Has App Engine created a noticeable increase in developers interested > in using Django? There has certainly been some interest from App Engine that flows into Django. You don't have to hang out on Django-users for too long to find questions that reference App Engine. > If so, why the seeming lack of excitement around App Engine? This question presupposes that there should be excitement. Rephrasing the question, why should we be excited? On the one hand - the tools they are exposing (BigTable, easy deployment environment, etc) are very exciting developments, and they clearly work well for Google itself. However, it's not like Apache and *SQL installations are going to go away overnight. There are some very good reasons to _not_ use App Engine - not the least of which is the fact that Google lists App Engine as a "preview" product (it doesn't even make it to Googles infamous "Beta" stage :-). At the moment, the vast majority of Django's audience (and 100% of the audience that pays my salary) aren't using App Engine, and wouldn't be able to (for commercial reasons) even if they wanted to. Yes, it's flattering to have one of the largest software companies in the world using Django. However, that doesn't mean that the Django Core developers are all going to drop everything and make App Engine their development priority. > Are > google engineers not involved in the community? There are a few tickets in Django's ticket tracker that I know have come from Google engineers, but those individuals haven't made any big noises about App Engine support. By way of evidence: when the v1.1 feature suggestion list was opened, nobody suggested App Engine support as a potential feature. Django is an open source project. If Google wants App Engine support in Django, they're free to engage with the community and make it happen. If any other company wants App Engine Support in Django, they're free to engage with the community and make it happen. If any individual wants App Engine Support in Django, they're free to engage with the community and make it happen. If you're not willing to write the code yourself, then you either need to convince someone to engage with the community and make it happen, pay someone to engage with the community and make it happen, or wait until it becomes a big enough itch for someone that it gets scratched. Yours, Russ Magee %-) --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Django developers" group. To post to this group, send email to django-developers@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to django-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/django-developers?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
