Java for Google App Engine

When Google App Engine first came out I was really surprised it didn’t support Java, because Google was (and is) really pushing GWT, so to have them release a web deployment platform that did not support their own favorite framework was odd. However they have now released a preview version of Google App Engine running Java. It doesn’t do everything I might want, for instance Lift doesn’t run on it out of the box and it doesn’t allow you to spawn your own threads (these problems are directly related). There is some work going on to make Lift work on it though (see the email thread).

Overall though I’m really excited. I have been looking for a platform that will allow me to run Java based web apps for a reasonable price and I think this is the first one that provides something that I may actually use. For a low traffic site it is free and it looks to me that the prices are pretty good even as the traffic increases.

Posted in Java, Scala