why is javascript node.js not on google app engine

Question

Google created the V8 JavaScript engine: V8 compiles JavaScript source code directly into machine code when it is first executed.

Node.js is built on V8 - why is Goo

Answer 1

It has been released as of March 2016.

https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2016/03/Node.js-on-Google-App-Engine-goes-beta.html

Answer 2

after years of experiences in google appengine, i switch to other cloud services now.

i think google appengine is actually an old fashion service in cloud computing industry. which is slow to new technology, difficult to deploy, time wasting to learn the apis and lacking of a lot of features you need in languages you use.

regardless of google's large community, i would not suggest anyone to use google appengine.

[newer paas]

i strongly recommend you to use openshift, appfog, heroku .etc's new paas cloud computing technologies, which are far more extensible, less change needing, more migrable from one platform to another, more freely coding in the beauty of the natural lanuage and its standard libraries without ugly platform specific apis.

[iaas]

if you want more control over the running os environment, you may give linode, digital ocean, amazon, google cloud engine, microsoft azure etc. iaas providers a try.

Answer 3

Google is a software-conservative company. Programming a backend in JavaScript would be absolutely unimaginable for Google's managers. Creating infrastructure Google itself won't be using is not a good investment. Reference: Notes from the Mystery Machine Bus

Answer 4

Because App Engine is a platform-as-a-service, and in order to add a new language/stack to GAE, Google need to create mid-level libraries that interface with the plethora of App Engine's services.

Moreover, all App Engine apps is sandboxed and has several functionalities restricted from inside their sandbox environment. This means that beside the need to create service libraries, Google also need to create a secured sandbox environment for any language/stack that they try to introduce into GAE.

I personally think the second reason is why Google does not introduce support for new language/stack as aggressive as Azure did. App Engine is, in a way, more 'managed' than Azure, and has a larger initial development cost for new language/stack.

Answer 5

As of June 2014, Google had a limited preview for custom languages on Google App Engine (which is different from Google Compute Engine).

Watch Building Node.js applications with App Engine and Custom Runtimes and check out https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/managed-vms/:

App Engine now offers a second hosting option: Managed VMs. The Managed VM hosting environment lets you run App Engine applications on configurable Compute Engine Virtual Machines (VMs). You can also use Managed VMs to deploy user-configurable custom runtimes, such as for Node.js and other runtimes.

The procedure to get into the beta is:

Sign up and create a Managed VM project

Managed VMs are in Limited Preview, you must sign up for access to this feature, create a billing-enabled project, and tell us about your project so we can whitelist it to run in a Managed VM. Follow these steps:

1. Sign up for access to Managed VMs.
2. Join the app-engine-managed-vms Google Group to participate in discussions about Managed VMs.
3. Projects (or apps - they are the same thing) must be in a U.S. data center. If you're planning to use an existing project, skip to the next step. Otherwise, create a new app in a U.S. data center. Navigate to https://preview.appengine.google.com and create a new app.
4. Enable billing for the project. Visit the page https://cloud.google.com/console/project/apps~, where is the ID of your project. Click on Settings in the left menu and then enable billing. If your app is billed under a Premier account, email us at app-engine-managed-vm-tt-id@google.com to have your new Cloud project billed under the same account.
5. Send an email to app-engine-managed-vm-tt-id@google.com with the application ID in the subject line.

When we receive your email, we’ll configure some resources behind the scenes and notify you via email when your project is ready to go. The email includes final instructions for setup. If you encounter an error while following these instructions, contact us at app-engine-managed-vm-tt-id@google.com.