Web as Platform: GAMeY insights
Over the past few weeks, I've been investigating the new state of the art with respect to the Web as an application development platform, focused on Web applications rather than on desktop apps with Web connections. This is all part of my renewed interest in the "Zero-Pound Computer". If we can store our personal data in the Cloud and if we can run applications that run in the Cloud, we can (or so I claim) look to the day when we won't take computers with us when we move, we will simply move to a new computer and our software and data will follow us.
The five major online services who have opened their APIs to developers to encourage the creation of applications that run in the Cloud are Google, Amazon, Microsoft, eBay, and Yahoo. Together they are often referred to as the GAMeY players. A good friend and colleague, Laurence Rozier of Meshverse Journal fame, has been buzzing a bit lately about Amazon's interesting array of Web Services. Of course, I have been aware for some time of Google's offerings, being, as I am, a Googlite. I was aware, too, of Yahoo's efforts to create JavaScript UI technologies and scripting libraries and overall impressed with their efforts. These three (dare I suggest the acronym GAY or might something like GoogazonY be more appropriate?) are getting the bulk of developer attention, with Google leading the charge by a considerable margin and Amazon coming in a fairly distant third behind it and Yahoo.
But Amazon may have The Secret Weapon in all of this in its unique combination of SS3 (Simple Storage Service), EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) and AMI (Amazon Machine Images). Couple those with its less known DevPay service and you have a platform that can effectively become your company's server farm and micropayment management system. None of the other players have these tools, and that has some important implications for who can and will use these Web APIs.
I just purchased James Murty's Programming Amazon Web Services from O'Reilly and while I'm just starting to delve into it, I am already fairly impressed by the breadth of the Amazon offering, a breadth which doesn't come through in checklists of API comparisons like this one. (Don't get me wrong, though; that checklist is quite handy in its own way.)
Interesting side note. The example code in Murty's book is almost all in Ruby. Python samples are available via download, but it is surprising to me that Ruby got the front-row seat here. Without Rails, Ruby is a very interesting language but not nearly as mature as, e.g., Python. Strange choice by the author and O'Reilly. I'll have more to say about the Ruby Surge in another post some time soon. Unless I lose interest. :-)
