My impression is that this app is looking for such a small overlap in demographics. It's looking for programmers who might not have the tools or the knowledge of deploying their own apps, which I think is relatively unlikely to find. I think programmers capable of writing their own apps would prefer to use their own tools. OH, BUT THAT'S JUST MY TWO CENTS.
I think there's a very wide spectrum of people who can appreciate AppJet. I would argue that most programmers don't have the knowledge to deploy a web app, especially if you define a "programmer" as someone who can hack together an AppJet app, which is very easy to do. Even for a very capable programmer, it's a lot of work to get an app hosted if you haven't done it before. Then there's programmers who CAN get a web app online, and have, but don't want to manage all the machines and software involved for every little project.
Before sites like Flickr, for example, it was possible to post photos online, just harder. Maybe the difference in perception is that hackers aren't expected to want such an "easy way out" when it comes to programming, their very area of expertise. But as a hacker myself I can tell you that using AppJet to whip up a quick app is a pleasure compared to going through all the typical production work.
I agree, and I find this idea fascinating. You can write code, and show testeable versions of it, together with their source to anyone who cares. And you can do some small code apps for your websites... I think there are plenty of applications for this tool.
You might very well be right that the overlap's small, but note that AppJet is potentially for programmers who do have knowledge about deployment/hosting issues. How so? Well, such a programmer might not want to deal with hosting issues for a particular project. If the project s/he is attempting really is 100 LOC, then getting the app all nice and hosted and scaleable might take an order of magnitude longer than the actual coding does. AppJet, if it delivers nicely, could be a real win here.
"Hosting issues", although I am not entirely sure what are you referring to, become issues only when a certain level of complexity is reached. By the time you get there, you already implemented several appjets yourself.
I mean the term "hosting issues" to be pretty general -- implementing a data storage system (perhaps a database), caching, setting up server space, getting Apache to proxy to your app server, etc.
Congrats on launching.