Seriously, PHP?
Are they that deseperate to appeal to people that they're going to add what is perhaps the most broken language to app engine? If you can't grasp python then you shouldn't be writing code.
Google is adding PHP to Google App Engine as the company tries to appeal to developers of the widely-used language. The addition was announced on Wednesday at Google's developer jamboree Google I/O. It means GAE now supports three widely used web languages – Python, Java, and PHP – and Go, a Google-sponsored language designed …
Hmmm... So because you don't like PHP and/or can't write neatly in it then nobody should?
Not that PHP doesn't feature a lot of stupid, especially in the various attempts at classes and objects, but like any flexible language you can choose to hang yourself with your code or write code neatly.
Bring on the idiotic holy language wars...
Maybe it should be: If you can't grasp assembly then you shouldn't be writing code...
So Google thought themselves too good for lowly PHP (in nerd circles) until everyone and their dog is supporting it. No thanks, stick it up your rear end. I'll make do with the thousands of smaller hosts that have been supporting it for over a decade and not treating it like a third class citizen.
nothing - it just another language with pros and cons.
but one with years of on the web testing, some decent MVC frameworks now to tackle the basics and a resource rich pool when you need to get business stuff actually done.
I am looking forward to seeing what google will offer on the db front.
The database is cloud SQL which is a managed version of MySQL that Google maintains, patches and replicates for you.
If you prefer the NoSQL camp, Google has also wrapped their datastore as an independent product called cloud datastore so you can call it from PHP on App Engine too.
Perfect for startups trying to get their software online but don't want to have to splash out for expensive hosting which may sit unused and burning electricity for months before it starts getting used by their software and customers.
People knock PHP a lot, but I fear that is often simply down to arrogance. PHP allows a lot of people to rapidly get software written and published. Sure, Python is a nice language, but there are more PHP developers out there than Python.
Good job Google.