I like Google App Engine. However, there are a number of gotchas that can creep up on you. Especially if you dive right in without doing any reading first.
Here's gotcha #1...
A number of standard Python modules are not available or only provide limited functionality. Click here to see Google App Engine's list of enabled, partially-enabled and empty modules.
Sometimes developing for Google App Engine isn't straightforward and requires a little imagination. However, most of the time there's a simple alternative; it just takes a little reading. For example, if you want to send e-mail on Google App Engine you can't use Python's smtplib (because it relies on socket, which is implemented as an empty module). Instead, you would do the following:
from google.appengine.api import mail
mail.send_mail(
sender="<from address>",
to="<to address>",
subject="sending e-mail on Google App Engine...",
body="... is easy once you know how"
)
There are more gotchas, this is just the first that I've had time to write about. Stay tuned...
