Prioritizing projects is always something I’ve hated to do but it is something I am required to do quite often. Even my projects that I work on for myself must be shuffled around depending on the current needs. I have many projects on my list currently including a few targeted for a business startup. There is always a need to juggle the long range and short term projects.

I’m having to step away from my Google App Engine test application for a while so I can work on building a few website mockups for a potential customer. The income potential moves this to the top of my list. The business startup projects are extremely important but a inflow of cash will help move along some of the more long term projects.

Managing multiple projects at work and also at home requires me to work with various programming languages. The adage “the right tool for the right job” is definitely true for application development. I currently develop using “C”, Java, PHP and Python. I’ve only recently started to learn Python because it’s currently the only language supported with the Google App Engine.

Knowing multilpe programming languages is not really a big deal with one exception. There are times when I have to jump between projects in a short time period. Jumping quickly back and forth between different projects and languages can be difficult. For instance, I was doing “C” development yesterday during the work day, Python development at home last night and now I’m making modifications to a Java application at work today. In a situation like this it’s not surprising to get compile errors due to using syntax/keyword/function from a different language.

Oh, did I mention I was also doing some Linux shell scripting yesterday too?

Luckily these situations where I have to jump quickly between languages doesn’t happen all that often. Usually I can work on just one or two projects for longer periods of time where the switching isn’t quite to chaotic.

I’m finally getting around to actual development using the Google App Engine. Since Python is currently the only supported language, I’ve had to do a little up front studying of the language itself. My programming language experience includes “C”, Java, and PHP, so learning Python is no big deal. I just need to work on learning all the syntax and structure.

I have been reading up on the documentation and following the associated Google Group for the App Engine. Along with the new language, I’m working out how to use the App Engine web application framework and the Django template system. The Django template system was rather easy to grasp because it is very similar to how I use XML/XSL for web page templates in Java.

For a test application, I’m building a dynamic blog that will have posts, articles, categories, tags, links, images, etc. It will use Django templates fully and will be integrated with stylesheets and selectable “themes”. Kind of like a mini wordpress system. It will have a management interface for configured “admins” and will use the App Engine datastore for all data. This should be enough of a project to allow me to fully utilize all the various aspects of the App Engine prior to starting a more serious work project that I have in mind.

I’ll keep you updated!

On April 7th, Google announced their new offering called “AppEngine”. AppEngine is an environment that allows you to develop web based applications that run on Google’s scalable systems. AppEngine provides dynamic web serving, a “datastore” used to store your applications data, automatic scaling and load balancing and a downloadable development environment. The AppEngine framework is currently only for the Python language.

AppEngine is currently considered to be “beta”. The initial release is only available to the first 10,000 developers that signed up. I was able to snag one of the 10,000 beta slots and now have access to AppEngine. I have not yet downloaded their development environment. I currently do not know Python but I have developed applications over the last 22 years in at least 6 different programming languages. I have started to look at the basic Python syntax and it looks straightforward. I’ll write a couple of small Python apps and get a better feel for the capabilities prior to downloading the AppEngine development kit.

I think this has the potential to be big considering the AppEngine environment takes care of scalability and load balancing for you. Scalability is not easy to build into web applications but having a framework provide those capabilities and having Google’s scalable systems backing the environment will be enticing to many developers.

Check out Google’s own page covering “What is Google App Engine?” for all the details.

I have added pages about my Home Automation project that I previously developed. I have not worked on it for a number of years, but I know there are still many Home Automation sites that link here. I brought back all the project data and have the pages available on my main Home Automation page.

Here we go again, lol. I thought it was time to get my coding site back up and start blogging about some of the projects I am working on. I also plan on covering other coding related subjects such as different programming toolkits (AJAX, Android, etc).