The main starting point for working with Google App Engine is https://developers.google.com/appengine/
We can develop GAE apps in either Java or Python. I’m going to recommend Python just because it’s relatively easy to learn and way less verbose than Java, but it should be possible to do much of the same work in Java if you strongly prefer it.
Work your way through the GAE-Python getting started guide, here: https://developers.google.com/appengine/docs/python/gettingstartedpython27/introduction It has pretty clear instructions for downloading the right tools on Windows and Mac. (On Windows, you will have to download Python 2.7 first, but the instructions have a link to it. Mac already comes with Python 2.7.)
What is not included in the GAE toolkit is a text editor. You have to find a suitable editor, preferably one that understands the syntax of languages like Java, Python, and YAML. For Windows, I recommend Notepad++. For the Mac, probably TextWrangler is a good idea.
Let me know if you get stuck on anything in this tutorial. I’d like you to bring a laptop to our next meeting with this simple app working. If you have more time, you can also begin to read some of the other documentation about GAE.
The files we experimented with on 9/12 are here: helloworld.zip