Douglas Purdy

Prereading: Google Reader to Twitter (rdr2twt)

In the interest of doing a simple comp for some other work I am doing, I decided to move this mere trifle to Google App Engine.

It took around 100 LOCs of Python code.

Observations:

1. The local SDK environment (dev fabric in Azure-speak) is straightforward, did what is was supposed to do, and mostly stayed out of the way.
2. Using whatever Python libraries I wanted was reasonable, although I had some issues with paths around the GData client (which I wanted to use for the Reader feed).  I ended up using ElementTree and urlfetch directly, not a big deal.
3. I didn’t like the fact the the SDK environment didn’t run cron jobs, but I did like two things.  First, it told me that the configuration was right and when the job would have right.  Second, cron just does supports HTTP GET, so it makes trivial to test.
4. The online management environment is quite nice.  I like the analytics a great deal for example.
5. TextMate is hands down the best text editor on the Mac.  This is not a GAE observation, but I want to the Intellipad team to read this and get motivated by the fact that I am using a different text editor.

I am thinking about adding more to see how this scales with application complexity. Two ideas are to make rdr2twt a public service (needs UI, etc.) or to use this as a prototype of some Infobus ideas that I have.  Still thinking on it.

That said, this has to compete with the siren call of the iPhone.  I am getting a lot of pressure to use the basis of LocoFoto as launching point for a couple of different apps.