I’ve been utilizing Google Cloud Platform since I learned how to use it in a previous cloud application course. For my team’s project, I’ve been using a pretty similar setup. Prior to taking that course, I had no idea how simple it could be – previously I was intimidated by it and could not make a functional project with it. After having the instructor walk through the set up it was substantially easier. I’ve been utilizing the database features, such as Google Cloud Datastore. It has been so easy to use that it almost feels like it’s not set up correctly, but it is. It only requires a few lines of code in the app and Google has documentation for a bare minimum setup to get it going. I think it’s an easy database to use and manage, and you can check your entities and view rather easily. In addition to the database features, it’s easy to deploy the project and have a working url. I think it’s not as simple as Vercel, but slightly more work – but the payout is that you can use a backend for minimal to no cost whereas Vercel seems to be better for just front-end deployment (at least last time I used it – I think it had a price tag to have a back-end). I just have become comfortable with Google’s ecosystem and haven’t played with other competitors such as Azure or AWS.
I think Google could be better with it’s documentation. I feel like the layout and the UI/UX of it is just not very beginner friendly. It’s what’s stopped me in my tracks before when I played around with it and required taking the OSU course to be able to navigate it more comfortably. Now that I’ve gotten my feet wet, I think the documentation is easier to parse through, but I still get confused sometimes when I go back to look something up.
Overall, I enjoy developing with GCP due to its plethora of features, even features I have only dabbled with lightly (like docker containers, VMs, etc), and generally easy and quick set up to launch a project/application.
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