Schott's Blog

I cannot say enough about how much better production code pushes are with the help of Erik Kastner's deployinator.

See http://codeascraft.etsy.com/2010/05/20/quantum-of-deployment/

http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/02/continuous-deployment.html

Next time I get to define the coding standards at a job, I'm including this link as perfect counter example (I've seen to many engineers program this way :(  http://java.dzone.com/articles/how-be-worse-programmer

This is the one of the best explanations of the Cassandra data model that I've seen in a while: 

 http://www.rackspacecloud.com/blog/2010/05/12/cassandra-by-example/

I need a home for my application.  I'm not talking about an application that I'm really expecting to "go-live".  Rather, I want a developer playground primarily for me to learn specific technologies.  Oh, and I don't really have any money to spend, so free or very low cost is a key factor.

Gone are the days of running a server in your own home.  I don't have any extra hardware anyway and there are a multitude of good reasons to let someone else host an app.

I first started with Google App Engine (GAE) since it was free and uses BigTable for storage (cool).  This worked great for simple Java applications and has excellent Eclipse plugins.  One technology that I definitely wanted to learn is Grails.  Grails is great for quickly building out a new Java web application using some of the best-in-class components.  While building and deploying a Grails app to GAE is supported, I ran into a wall on getting the app running.  GAE has a 30 second max request servicing timeout.  GAE does not start an app's JVM until it receives a request.  The 30 second timeout applies to the first request; both starting up the JVM/servlet and responding to the actual request.  Grails startup time is just too long.  The GAE mailing list has multiple discussions and suggested workarounds.  In the end, if you want all the components that Grails includes, then GAE does not work within the current constraints.

I looked at two of the most popular hosting services Amazon Web Services and Rackspace.  Both offer great services for hosting applications and handle scaling.  However, I'm only looking for a "developer playground"; not a real live app.  So, they seem a little too much for want I'm looking for.

My requirement that I can host a Grails application rules out a lot of the bottom-basement priced hosting services.  Right now, the top services that I'm looking at is Slicehost.  Slicehost is owned by Rackspace and starts at $20/month.  I guess I'd learn a little Linux system administration in the process.

I've also heard about 1&1; not sure about this one yet.  The Grails website lists some hosting companies, but the list seems out-dated and none of them seemed to fit me requirement.

Seems that all software languages and books start with the traditional "Hello, World" example.

So, being a software engineer, here is my "Hello, World" first blog post.