Engineering Software as A Service

goes with the edX course berkeleyX 169x

not upto expectation

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.

Libro molto valido per chi è alle prime armi con le architetture SaaS e Rails. Ricco di esempi e codici scaricabili. Consigliato come punto di partenza

I did manage to complete the course last year (April 2013) without purchasing this book, however it was a struggle and spent many hours Googling and reading on-line tutorials.This book gives an excellent background and pre reading for the Engineering Software as a Service CS169.1/2 EDX Course.The course is being developed continuously, so consider the kindle version, since you can get the upgrades for free (updates and errata fixes).I would recommend this book, for anyone serious about learning Ruby/rails application development combined with modern practices (Agile, Scrum, Pair programming, Git, Heroku, ...). It's not one book which covers all those topics in detail, you might need to go out and get a Ruby book as well, depending on your experience or whether you can learn languages with online references and materials, but it is the book that brings all those things together into a coherent form in a practical fashion.Many exercises, and off book references, this, repositories for courseware available for cloning at Github. You learn by doing, and this book will point you n the right direction and give you a good start.