This morning, we were greeted by the shuttle slightly later than usual, to be taken to the other half of Google Seattle/Kirkland, the Seattle offices! On the other side of Lake Washington, the Seattle campus is in a more metropolitan area, but it is literally right along the shores of Lake Union. The differences in the two offices are subtle yet stark; they are both unmistakably "Google-y", pervaded by common features of a Google office, and yet each one has its own unique charms. The Seattle offices appear more homey and grungy, but in a very artsy way with each room tastefully decorated with nautical/marine themes.
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| One of the two Google Seattle buildings. |
After taking a quick tour around the building (a few more pictures hopefully coming soon), we set off to work learning App Engine, a tool that allows web applications to be published online. The setup of App Engine definitely took some getting used to, as it incorporates both HTML/CSS and Python, and it was sometimes hard to tell where one would go in relation to the other. Furthermore, we were introduced to .yaml files, which are used in App Engine to specify the paths of URLs based on HTTP request handlers (from the browser to the server).
After a day of learning the basics of App Engine doing practice exercises, I came up with an application that takes user input and generates random dice rolls. It may appear basic at first, but there are actually many components coming together in the background to make the application work. Perhaps the most difficult part of the code for me was implementing the images of dice faces in place of plain numbers; we didn't really learn how to link to static files through the host, so it took some research and help to figure out how to allow the host toh have access to the image files that I needed. You can check out the application at http://dice-rolls.appspot.com!
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| Sample of dice roll app! |
Furthermore, we worked on a prime factor calculator, which can either take in a number and determine whether or not it is a prime number, or list all the prime numbers up until a certain number. I will definitely be trying to work on this program some more tomorrow, as not all the components are yet complete. Creating all these projects with App Engine today, one of the things that amazes me is how the different programming languages and files come together to make interactive and functional web pages. Tomorrow we will continue even further into the many different components of App Engine; I can't wait to see what other variety of functions we will "unlock" as we learn to implement more actions in App Engine. It's been a wonderful first day at Google Seattle, and I am only looking forward to finding out what's next.
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