[pbh]

I went through this thought process. I really liked Python and auto-scaling, so GAE seemed really appealing. But the combination of lack of SQL and inflexibility of architecture led me to want to create the sort of combination architectures you describe with EC2 instances or whatever.

Ultimately, after a lengthy debate with a friend, I concluded that Heroku was a sufficiently better option that it was worth learning Ruby (which I've been writing more or less as an uglier Python anyway).