Some reasonable points, especially if you're already committed to Django as a platform.
BTW, I meant back end as in data store, not computation. From what I understand, using BigTable differs markedly from using MySQL or Postgres, and you would have to port to one or the other to leave Google unless you want to do some serious development work on your data back end.
I hope you're right about being able to salvage your user data, but I would study both the license agreement and the technical capabilities very closely on this one. It would be a shame to build an early site thinking it was just a starting point and then discover that you could never change key aspects of it.
"... Some reasonable points, especially if you're already committed to Django as a platform. .."
Not really. There are some aspects of Django that really suck. Complex template logic for one . I really appreciated the simplicity of webpy after wading through the django api. On a side note, friendfeed's (Bret Taylor) ~ http://bret.appspot.com/entry/experimenting-google-app-engin... worked on google appengine. When he built friendfeed he chose webpy as a starting point. There is a lesson somewhere in there. They key thing is I can use CGI, webpy or django so I'm not bound to any one choice.
"... I hope you're right about being able to salvage your user data, but I would study both the license agreement and the technical capabilities very closely on this one. It would be a shame to build an early site thinking it was just a starting point and then discover that you could never change key aspects of it. ..."
Good points I'll have to think about them. The one that will matter most will be the user information. The app I have in mind is a design tool of sorts that generates object code for users. I don't think appengine as it is will work for the back-end ideas I have but who knows if users really want this?
BTW, I meant back end as in data store, not computation. From what I understand, using BigTable differs markedly from using MySQL or Postgres, and you would have to port to one or the other to leave Google unless you want to do some serious development work on your data back end.
I hope you're right about being able to salvage your user data, but I would study both the license agreement and the technical capabilities very closely on this one. It would be a shame to build an early site thinking it was just a starting point and then discover that you could never change key aspects of it.
In any case, good luck with your site.