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I'm considering making an app on Google App Engine, to help an existing not-so-large (1000s) community with some field specific collaboration on existing projects. On single project work several people, mostly discussing things. App should communicate with "back-end" which can be hosted somewhere no problem.

But I'm not looking for another "pros and cons" discussion (for example you can read such here: Pros & Cons of Google App Engine ) but rather I'd like to hear about other people experiences in similar situations.

Any personal experiences willing to share? Ideas?

Community
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IgorJ
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    First idea: make this question a community wiki. – Constantin Nov 02 '10 at 11:52
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    The question seems too vague to provide a coherent answer. What specifically are you wondering about? – Nick Johnson Nov 02 '10 at 12:36
  • I'm thinking more along the lines of ease of use, APIs, support when you get stuck, migration from GAE if needed, etc. P.S.: technology stack I have in mind for my app is python plus Django – IgorJ Nov 02 '10 at 12:50

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I would say, GAE/Python is a pleasant platform to develop for, if you don't mind community-driven kind of support. Although my personal experience with tracko was quite rough, it was mostly because I tried to fit millions of requests into free quota.

Watch out for important issues, for example, HTTPS support and what Python version your modules require. Check if any of issues is a showstopper for you. As usual, it is recommended to develop a small project to get the feel of the platform.

Constantin
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App Engine provides great APIs to perform common tasks like authentication with almost no effort on your end.

There are some unique limitations that some people aren't ready for when they start using App Engine, such as the 30s request timeout, or the non-relational datastore, but they're not difficult to work around once you're used to them, and they make your app as fast and scalable as possible, even within the free quota.

There's a lot of great docs, too, and I recommend watching as many Google I/O talks on App Engine as you can find, they're all really informative.

Jason Hall
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