Learn Amazon Web Services in a Month of Lunches

by David Clinton

AWS gives users the networking, compute, and security services they need without making them pay for anything they're not actually using. With almost a hundred individual AWS services, putting all the pieces together is not a simple thing. That's where this book can help.

Learn Amazon Web Services in a Month of Lunches guides readers through the process of building a robust and secure web application using the core AWS services they really need to know. When they're done, readers will be comfortable with the basics, and know exactly where to look when they're ready for more.

Purchase of the print book includes a free eBook in PDF, Kindle, and ePub formats from Manning Publications.

Genres: Programming, Technology

328 pages, Paperback

Published September 3, 2017

Reviews

[Matt Simmons · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well written (if a little hokey sometimes), informative, and hands-on; gets you up and running with AWS, even some of the intermediate (non-developer) tools quickly and efficiently, and even introduces a little cloud computing theory painlessly. A very good introduction to AWS.

[Chris · Rating 2 out of 5]

Opinion on the first few chapters:
Not too great with detailing the projects, felt kind of lackluster…

A tad out of date when it comes to screenshots, options/settings and such. The UI has definitely changed and/or moved things, especially things such as the calculators and various S3 options (although there is a way to fall back to the "old experience", that will eventually not be the case so expect the screenshots to not be as helpful)


Thoughts after finishing the book:
I didn't feel like it went very deep, i.e. just scratched the surface on most, if not all services. Even on the main services it didn't seem to go too deep on them. With a quick "project" and then moving on

There were a few typos, missing words, etc. here and there. Nothing too glaring but definitely distracting.

Also a month is usually 28+ days, so why only 21 chapters? There was definitely more room to grow. I'm not sure why it was whittled down to a measly 21 chapters. If you can even count the 1st one and last 2

It almost seemed like the author didn't know the audience to gear it towards, where one chapter he literally broke down what an IP address is (e.g. the network and host sections, etc.) Where that time definitely could have been spent elsewhere on something more AWS related

I would have liked more smaller projects (that were easier to follow and/or easier to expand on later on) and overall to go deeper into the topic/service with info on how it works

TLDR; The low rating is due to the outdated nature of the book and the lack of real in depth coverage of the huge topic that is "Amazon Web Services"
(Granted I know there are 100+ services, even the main few were very brief covered)

[Jorge DeFlon · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very basic introduction to AWS.
A second month would be welcome.

[George · Rating 5 out of 5]

I passed the AWS Practitioner exam off the back of this book. No brain dumps.

Really good read and very informative.

Thanks x

[Julio Biason · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some points here:

(-) Lots of screenshots. I know this is just a personal issue, not something that is inherent bad, but I have to put this as a negative point for two reasons: First, these images are very low quality in the ePub version; Second, the book focuses too much on the screenshots, without focusing on what the problem, solution and concepts are; "Click there, type this, click complete" happens a lot in the book, which shouldn't be bad if, at least, it explained why you clicked there and typed that. I'm not even sure if the images are still up to date -- some references are really out of date already, like saying to use Ubuntu 16.04. It would be a lot more useful to explain the concepts and then show how to apply them, either by using the web interface of the command line interface.

(-) Speaking of command line, the book praises the tool, have a full chapter about it, tell how good it is and then... nothing. The following chapters completely ignore it. Again, this seem like a missed oportunity to explain concepts and then show how to apply them using the web interface and the CLI tool.

(-) I'm not sure who is the target audience for the book. I mean, some things seem to be dumbed down to make easier for people who don't know the technology to understand what's going on, but... would someone that isn't related to the development of an application, that haven't seen or heard about databases and stuff worry about using AWS? 'Cause that's who the book seems focused on: people who just want something on the internet, but have no idea what they want or how to make it work.

(As a side note, the WordPress install could be completely moved to an appendix and keep going with just the concepts.)

(-) Some things doesn't seem related to AWS itself. For example, the second chapter is only about installing WordPress on a Linux server, and it could be done in any Linux install, even VirtualBox. This is kinda related to the previous point: If someone was attached the development of some web application, saying that you need a database and PHP and related libraries would be enough; but when you have to explain the whole install of WordPres... what's the focus?

The small bits of concepts that are scattered around the images are somewhat interesting, but because they are so tied to the screenshots, a lot of information could be just missed. Or worse, turn people into simple clickers that don't understand why they are clicking this or that button, 'cause all they learnt was that they should click that button.

[Jon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well written easy to follow. No deep dive, but gets you up and running. I think Mr. Clinton manages to weave a good level of light weight humour into what is a very technical book. It was a good read.