Engineering Software as a Service: An Agile Approach Using Cloud Computing First Edition

If you're looking to focus and drill deep into Rails, you may end up slightly disappointed. On the other hand, if you're looking for the most applicably real-world lesson on software development in a modern workplace, there's nothing better.Really, this book and the corresponding MOOC are about modern software development as a whole. What it does in an amazingly ambitious but cohesive way is weave together all the aspects of modern software development in the real world. Part of that is the technologies du jour (Rails, Javascript, Heroku/cloud), and part of that is about the software development methodologies du jour (Agile, TDD/BDD). However, what was most valuable to me was the "why" of these tools and techniques. Why is agile better? When is it not appropriate? Why are unit tests so important? Why is refactoring so difficult without them?On a personal note, I spent a lot of time unemployed last year trying to retrain myself to be a better software engineer. I took both CS169.1x and CS169.2x, and I bought the book as well, which went into depth about a lot of topics that the lectures could not. I wanted to move away from dowdy old tech stacks and work with "startup" technology, but it was overwhelming trying to find a resource to help put together all of the disparate ideas into a cohesive whole. For example, one book might do a great job at explaining object-oriented design and various design patterns, but didn't explain REST APIs or the benefits/challenges of SaaS as an architecture. Another might explain agile methodologies, but didn't talk much about TDD/BDD, or what makes a test a unit test and not an integration test.I am now an iOS developer, and even though that's a far different world than the Rails/SaaS stuff covered in the book and in the MOOC, I still think this is most directly responsible for my successful transition. I am a better software developer for it.

This is a good book, but it's not as great on its own. The book is designed as a support material for the BerkeleyX 169.1x and 169.2x courses. This means you'll take more advantage of the book by taking those courses yourself.Anyway, the book (and the course as well) is a very good reference on current effective practices on Software Engineering. If you read it, it might work to keep you up to date with good software development practices, taking Software as a Service and Agile Development as it's core topics.Both the book and the course are meant for people with more-than-rookie programming skills, so you won't get too much from it if you're a still beginner. Anyway, you might use it as reference, and it will give you good and useful information.It's not a book on programming, it's a book on Software Engineering, even though it uses Ruby on Rails as the language-and-framework set for explaining all the concepts and practices covered. The main reason why the book and course features Ruby on Rails instead of other languages and frameworks is the fact that, according to the authors' opinion, it's a perfectly suited technology (maybe the best) for fast and productive Agile Development.

Engineering Software as a Service (SOA) was an excellent book for my purposes. The author offers fairly detailed steps and examples of how a manager or team lead would move legacy systems to web services and then to the cloud. This is not a coding book about SOAP, RESTFUL, or JSON interfaces. It is not a reference or specification either. In fact, Engineering Software as a Service is a fairly easy read from beginning to end. While I do not necessarily agree 100% with everything he says, I do think it's good to prepare for other opinions your organization may or may not share with the author. Lastly, I think he wrote this book based on hands-on experiences because I could feel his pain; especially in the warnings. I also think he wrote this for a perfect world (with tons of time, budget, and resources) so it will likely be incumbent upon the reader to adapt to his or her own paradigm.

This book does a fine job of teaching agile development. You'll encounter all aspects of modern web application development: Test-Driven Development; Behavior-Driven Development; Version Control; Javascript; Refactoring; Design Patterns; and legacy code. It covers everything you need to know, and provides great recommendations for deepening your understanding of specific topics; the list of sources is worth the cost of the book alone. Finally, it uses the Ruby programming language and the Ruby on Rails web application framework to teach these principles. So by the time you are finished with the book, you have both a great understanding of agile software engineering and a toolset that is highly relevant in today's job market.

I used this book together with the EDX (SaaS1 and 2) courses taught by the same authors.I just can recommend it to anybody who wants to learn about agile software development, cloud computing (especially SaaS), the MVC architectureand get experience with the Ruby on Rails (RoR) framework, as they choose it for software development. It is not for Ruby beginners, but at the beginning of the course they recommend some good sources to get warm-up with Ruby (and RoR).I really warmly recommend the book and the course to anybody, you will enjoy it!

The book and Edx course are solid introductions to Saas and the best references I've seen to date. However, the audio quality of the linked screencasts are atrocious and annoying, despite good quality content. The fact that this hasn't been remedied in the 2 years they've been available seriously detracts from the credibility of the offering. Every time I listen to one I get so distracted by the ridiculously poor production I lose confidence in the author. It's the digital audio equivalent of gross misspellings or poor grammar. As professors you certainly wouldn't accept code with these kinds of errors. I'm surprised you tolerate it in your production.