Some of the more avid online monkeys will know all about Twitter being notorius for breaking, (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/02/11/and-twitter-goes-down-again/) last year in 2008. It's since survived thanks to it's huge user-base but you can bet there was a sweat and furror in their programmers den for a few hours while the service was down (check us on http://twitter.com/dancourse).

We want to learn from other people's experience while we're developing Happy Packages and it's a good idea that while we build we're do our best to stop such events knocking the whole application for 6 when we least expect it. So what are we looking out for?

Here's the internal list we compiled of main selling points of an app or language must consider...
- Instant Scalability
- Simplicity
- Reliability
- Solid programming Language
- Server hosting
- Cost
- Me coding it!

So what have you found after weeks of discussion?

The Google App Engine,

Instant Scalability.
There's no way you can fully prepare for an app to handle everything it's going to have to deal with through it's lifetime. So it's sensible practice to build on a Server & Framework combo that's built to handle the most. So as the Happy Packages user base grows and we begin to see more spikes in service, we can feel secure that things are able to change without to much hassle!
However... we're not sure what they'll charge when your app gets really popular, so that could bite us in the a$$.

Simplicity.
GAE provides a simple interface, local testing app, Simple database interaction, Simple deployment, Simple stats, simple to start working on, simple

Solid programming Language.
Python is wonderfully built for OOP (Object Oriented Programming) and has thousands of online tutorials and loads of documentation so we won't get too stuck.

Relability.
It's Google innit!

Server hosting.
The server can easily be one of the weakest point in an app's chain and without fore-thought it would be fec*ing difficult to press the reset button. However, the Google Server will deal with spikes of use, large quotas of data and with the added bonus that it's Google supported and all for free...

Cost.
The google service for now is free for our use! Every start-up needs to save cash, and this is perfect.

Me coding it.
I'm a clever sausage (with Rich on my shoulder) so it won't be too bad right... Why not see our first lovely app, http://hello-thought-den.appspot.com/

Brill, Allons-y!

Posted by dancourse