Objectives

The purpose of this book is to teach you the fundamental skills required to deploy a Web application to the AWS cloud, to make the Web as accessible as possible to aspiring developers.

Background

Web technologies are advancing at a ludicrous speed. Given a laptop, an Internet connection and basic programming skills, anybody can build an app and deploy it to the cloud at zero cost. There are literally billions of potential users at your fingertips.

Programming is getting increasingly abstract, making code easier to write. However the process of deploying that code can still be somewhat mystifying. There are many vendors, many processes, many pricing tiers and many tradeoffs. It's hard to get started and be confident in your decisions.

If this process were less complicated, perhaps even simple, there would be more developers more able to accomplish their dreams. There would be more apps, more services, and more time spent on solving more interesting problems.

Who is this for?

Any developer interested in learning about deployment on AWS. You may have the most rudimentary programming knowledge, or be a specialist who hasn't dabbled in operations, or have experimented with AWS before and simply bounced off. This book should be approachable for all skill levels.

We will walk through an inventory of fundamental concepts, tools and services with example configurations. All of them are free to start out with, and will be able to scale with you. Also, the list is complete enough that you will finish with a working system.

All explanations aim to be as concise as possible, while remaining approachable. More details are made available through external links. The target is one hour to either read the whole book, or set up the whole system by following the "fast lane" summaries at the end of each section.

Ideally, this book should be considered equal parts guide and reference.

Why did you write it?

I'm passionate about software engineering, in particular Web apps and full-stack development. I've been through three university degrees, two companies, one startup as technical co-founder, and thousands of books and blogs. It has been a hell of a lot of fun, and I'm just getting started.

Some things can only be learned through experience. For everything else, we draw on the experience of others. I'm no guru, but I've learned enough to suspect that my experience might be helpful to others, maybe even you.

Everybody is searching for a legacy. Maybe I'll end up building the next Google and retire having left my mark on the world... but I know that would require as much luck as skill. On the other hand, no matter what happens, I can always teach what I know, and maybe even inspire the next Larry Page instead.

And the best part is they're not mutually exclusive! ¿Por qué no los dos?