TLDR - A replacement for the discontinued Google App Engine Launcher with some improvements
Since I’m not a ‘Professional’ developer and I hate playing around in Command Line (Terminal), Google App Engine Launcher was a life saver. Go to a UI and see all my projects in a table. Select a Project and click a button to run it, view the logs, deploy to Production. I didn’t have to muck around with command line arguments to remember the different commands and/or flags needed to run my projects.
GAE Launcher helped me talk to non-expert programmers about learning to code and building Apps. Once, I bought a laptop for someone who had just gotten into college and as as a way of encouraging (making it easier) this person to learn to code, I pre-installed Python & GAE Launcher on the laptop.
Then Google stopped supporting GAE Launcher. I kept my installed version and used it till last year when it was ‘effectively’ killed (you can no longer use it to deploy to Production). I switched to gcloud but I had all of my earlier listed problems.
I decided to build a replacement. I get to solve my own problem and learn new stuff (Electron, Vue, etc).
I also get to change a few functionalities I didn’t like in the original tool and some things I don't like with the command line e.g.
a) typing in flags in a textbook has been replaced with checkboxes on the UI
b) deploying also deploys your index and cron files (in gcloud command line, you'll have to execute 3 separate commands)
This is great! As a non-programmer myself, I greatly enjoyed some of the old Udacity courses, particularly the web development course taught be Steve Huffman. Unfortunately many of these older courses used Google App engine, which as you say was much simpler to use back then. I recently re-took the course and spent days trying to get everything up and running on Google App engine rather than working through the course content. While a learning experience in itself, it was not how I wanted to be spending the few hours I have after work. Thank you for putting this together.
You're exactly the kind of target that I was thinking about. Please let me know via the contact us form on the website if you encounter any bugs or if you have any feedback
4 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 20.0 ms ] threadSince I’m not a ‘Professional’ developer and I hate playing around in Command Line (Terminal), Google App Engine Launcher was a life saver. Go to a UI and see all my projects in a table. Select a Project and click a button to run it, view the logs, deploy to Production. I didn’t have to muck around with command line arguments to remember the different commands and/or flags needed to run my projects.
GAE Launcher helped me talk to non-expert programmers about learning to code and building Apps. Once, I bought a laptop for someone who had just gotten into college and as as a way of encouraging (making it easier) this person to learn to code, I pre-installed Python & GAE Launcher on the laptop.
Then Google stopped supporting GAE Launcher. I kept my installed version and used it till last year when it was ‘effectively’ killed (you can no longer use it to deploy to Production). I switched to gcloud but I had all of my earlier listed problems.
I decided to build a replacement. I get to solve my own problem and learn new stuff (Electron, Vue, etc).
I also get to change a few functionalities I didn’t like in the original tool and some things I don't like with the command line e.g.
a) typing in flags in a textbook has been replaced with checkboxes on the UI
b) deploying also deploys your index and cron files (in gcloud command line, you'll have to execute 3 separate commands)
You're exactly the kind of target that I was thinking about. Please let me know via the contact us form on the website if you encounter any bugs or if you have any feedback