Engineering Software as a Service: An Agile Approach Using Cloud Computing + $10 AWS Credit

by Armando Fox, David A. Patterson

For a limited time, you will receive a promotional code for $10 of credit for Amazon Web Services when purchasing the Kindle Edition of “Engineering Software as a An Agile Approach Using Cloud Computing.” Amazon will e-mail you the promotional code within 24 hours of your purchase. The promotional code can be redeemed for AWS Credits at Please consult the e-mail for additional redemption details and full Terms and Conditions of this offer. The promotional code and AWS Credits expire on February 28, 2016. A one-semester college course in software engineering focusing on cloud computing, software as a service (SaaS), and Agile development using Extreme Programming (XP). This book is neither a step-by-step tutorial nor a reference book. Instead, our goal is to bring a diverse set of software engineering topics together into a single narrative, help readers understand the most important ideas through concrete examples and a learn-by-doing approach, and teach readers enough about each topic to get them started in the field. Courseware for doing the work in the book is available as a virtual machine image that can be downloaded or deployed in the cloud. A free MOOC (massively open online course) at saas-class.org follows the book's content and adds programming assignments and quizzes. See for details.

Genres: Programming, Technical, Technology, Textbooks, Reference, Software

500 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 12, 2013

About the author

Armando Fox is a Professor at UC Berkeley, the faculty advisor to the UC Berkeley MOOCLab, and the winner of the 2015.

Reviews

[Mathi Fonseca · Rating 5 out of 5]

Usually, when you find a book that covers many topics, you end up reading an introduction to things you already read in the Wikipedia article. This book is NOT the case. It covers many topics that have become essential to every programmer nowadays and it does it in a comprehensible but yet very detailed way.

[Eduardo Castro · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've read this book following a MOOC from edX and it made total sense. It makes a great introduction in Agile and helps new developers while working with Rails. To be fair, I don't know if it is a great book standalone but I recommend the course for everyone safely.

[Wudongnoodles · Rating 4 out of 5]

You are not going to be able to learn Ruby, Rails and JavaScript in this book. Go grab a book for each of the topics respectively. That is what I did. Otherwise you will be disappointed.

[Matias · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best book about the whole process of creating a modern web application in an Agile way with Ruby on Rails and friends

[Иван Бишевац · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read it 2013 as a additional material for the course. It was very nice and easy introduction to software as a service principles and concrete tools (Ruby, Ruby on Rails, Heroku,..).

[Alberto Venturini · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is useful if you are planning to take the CS-169x courses on edX.org.

Be warned: there is A LOT of material crammed into these 12 chapters - so the whole book is more of an introduction / tutorial on various topics, such as web programming, Ruby on Rails, Javascript / AJAX, Agile, cloud computing.

Also - it's a beta edition. Expect mistakes and some unfinished sections.

I liked the writing style - engaging and to the point.

All in all, if you are taking the edX courses, get this book. Otherwise, I suggest looking for alternatives.

[Joe Narvaez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another amazing text for an amazing edX course. Fox and Patterson are masters at showing you the Cloud from high above, then all the way down to detailed engineering practices for interpersonal and technical development. Agile approach is no nonsense/bureaucracy. Their principle of "design the tests before you write code" creates elegant Saas apps. Their special lecture on why the obamacare site failed on first deployment was incredibly insightful.

[Ron Lunde · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was the textbook for the EdX class on SaaS. I think both the class and the book try a bit too hard to be a "one size fits all", and teach everything from history to software development best practices to RAILS web development. It's not the sort of book you pick up to learn something on your own, I think.

[Karen]

I'm going to put this book aside for now, as I am already working in this area (creating software that lives in the cloud and gets updated pretty much every day).

[Deepak Verma · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very concise in software development lifecycle and covers ver crucial layers of micro service architecture. Worth reading