Basically I agree that when leveraging an engine you shouldn’t at the same time strangle it at birth - or at least give the impression that you won’t.

Hopefully the quota will be dropped pretty soon

Paul McDonald who is a product manager on Google App Engine just contacted me to offer support and to see what they can do about the quotas.

It’s true that you bleed on the bleeding edge but it’s also part of the game. All things considered, I enjoy it. And I love working with Python, Django, and Google App Engine. They’ve built something awesome; simple to use, intuitive… I _know_ that in the slightly longer term we are going to be rewarded in this decision as Google add more features to the platform and integrate with their other solutions (APIs, etc.)

I wasn’t expecting a smooth ride but it has been much smoother than it could have been with such a new technology.

If anything, developing with Python, Django, and Google App Engine has had as positive an impact on my happiness as switching to a Mac from Windows did. (And it has made me a better developer … if nothing else, I actually _understand_ regular expressions now instead of stumbling through them with nary a clue)

I really do hope that they change their approach to the quota system and focus on support though as I see those as the weakest points.

As I told Paul in my email to him a few moments ago, I am _very_ passionate about Google App Engine. It is going to revolutionize how people build and deploy apps. Basically, we’re witnessing the birth of the Commodity Web.

@Dan: I love everything about Google App Engine apart from the quotas. I’m not a sys admin so EC2 doesn’t appeal to me. I want to spend my time developing, not tweaking infrastructure. Google App Engine gives me that. It’s the best platform I’ve worked with in my 20-odd years as a developer.

I don’t see higher fees for higher consumption as a penalty. Perhaps the most important thing is how quotas are handled. In other words, that your apps do not display quota error pages and that upgrades are automatic (based on you consenting to such automatic upgrades.)

Basically, my whole argument boils down to this: No progressional app or site wants to have their users see “over quota” messages. Whatever system is implemented should try and avoid this as much as possible instead of making it a characteristic of the platform.

Good hosts don’t penalize you, they charge you for what you consume. If you consume more, they charge you more. Call me crazy, but I’m happy with that.”

I’m unclear why “penalized” is an interesting word to be used, as I would consider an excess charge to be, well, a penalty. Generally the rates for overages on your - wait, wait, can’t call it a quota - on your base service agreement (there we go!) are notably higher than what your base rate would work out to be on a per unit basis.

I know you’re not looking for people to play the “it’s in beta” card, but I can only assume that Google has quotas so that until they get a business model in place, and the infrastructure to provide the service they want to provide, they can offer a beta that provides enough horsepower for people to start building their apps. I don’t imagine the engineers want to sit there watching the servers and having to manually disable apps that are hogging the system.

If you’re upset that you can’t pay for additional cycles at this point, why aren’t you using a different cloud - say, EC2?

Disclaimer: I know at least one engineer on the Google App Engine team. I also know Kevin Marks, for whatever that may be worth.

Then you wouldn’t be using app engine…

Seriously, the pictures of yourself are getting sickening.