Amazon Web Services for Mobile Developers: Building Apps with AWS

This was a very impressive book. I am fairly new to this topic so I am approaching this as a beginner. I felt it to be easy to understand though of course it is still a technical subject. Obviously this is quite a fast moving field but the fundamentals are covered very well. I learned a lot.

Very good book , broken up into small sections that also starts with an overview of Amazon AWS services as a whole - before diving down into the sections directly relevant to being a developer. If I had to be picky it was in places a bit like a pre sales document because it does continually stresses how easy it was to do this - but sort of expected. Its clearly pitched at expert developers but the language and tone is good for me as someone who brings in developers. So overall, informative and a good reference

I grabbed this book for my son who works in IT. He has road-tested it for me, and he is very pleased with it. He reports that it is kind of like a For Dummies book in that it walks you through AWS and how to use it, from first principles. It is clear, easy to understand and to follow, is populated with screenshots and in-depth explanations - and the level of detail is superb. He is thrilled with it and is using it as a support and ready reckoner in his work. Would also be fabulous for IT students.

As I have read the first few chapters I can't comment on the mobile specific later parts of the book yet.The initial chapters cover AWS in general. Starting with an overview and then more detailed information on each part of the system.Each chapter starts with an explanation of the specific part of AWS covered in that chapter followed by a walkthrough of some common tasks using the management console.Despite having a good grounding in AWS I found the explanations very useful. Some parts of the system are not very intuitive and can be a little bewildering e.g. IAM but this books covers them clearly and logically.I found the walkthroughs which have pages of screenshots less useful. As I already have experience using the management console I know that it's pretty intuitive and easy to use and doesn't really need a book with pages of screenshots with highlighted buttons to press or fields to fill in to guide you through tasks. Also the management console gets frequent updates which quickly makes those printed screenshots obsolete. Finally the walkthroughs make up a good chunk of each chapter. If they were more concise the book would be considerably less bulky.In summary the explanations of the AWS system are clear and well written. The screenshotted walkthroughs not so much. Don't be put off by the bulk you can probably skip big chunks if you want to.

Like many I find my day-to-day work life now starting to encompass AWS and other cloud services. As a 30 year IT veteran cloud services starting to fulfill the ideals of what the internet actually promised us. Add to the huge explosion in requirements for cloud service, the need to stay constantly connected using our mobile devices and far quicker than you realise you can quickly become swamped with so many options it's hard to know which horse to back when looking to develop apps and utilities that may take a month or two code and only have an 18 month life span. AWS is by far and away the leading cloud provider, their joined-up-thinking in terms of the huge array of "toys" offered from their toybox makes it almost a no brainer to use AWS as a back for any cloud based service.While I really only dabble in mobile development, my main focus being in the DevOps areas of traditional infrastructure systems, I thought that this book would be an ideal way to add another string to my bow in getting to grips with AWS. So it has proven to be. This book is superb. The first 7 chapters alone are worth the cost of the book. AWS services are bewildering at first and even learning the core fundamental services like S3, Dynamo, Lambda and the the most important IAM for security, can leave your head spining. The author has been given the luxury of having plenty of pages to thorughly explain the core services in great detail and at the perfect pace. So before you even dig out XCode or Android Studio you have confidence to know what you'll be doing, and with the slower pace you constantly haev ideas sparking off in your mind, the more ideas you have for AWS services the more Amazon will ensure you find a way to make them come to life.After the first quarter of the book you move into the first steps in using mobile SDKs in conjunction with the AWS services and it's here once again the pace is leisurely but never dull. You learn the correct way to ensure you create secure and solid applicaitons. One of the key issues facing mobile developers these days is that the pace in the mobile market is frightening, you can start coding an app on Monday and by Friday the ideas you had in mind have already been surpassed by a new technology! One of the great things about the approach this book takes is that the dependencies rely on AWS services more than the local app coding and having spent many hours with AWS staff in the UK you are left in no doubt that AWS are comitted to maintainin and maturing their services, so as you code apps both on mobile and traditional platforms you will never be left high'n'dry as a service is retired or phased out. I've found the opposite to be true, that AWS is constantly looking to improve apps rather than give up on them. This can only be good news and ensures that everything you learn in this book will be relevant today and at least for a good few years yet.I come from a DevOps/Infrastructure background and I obtained the book purely out of curiosity about what is possible using the AWS services and mobile apps, with some very basic ideas for some mobile apps that might be useful for my personal and worklife. While my coding skills are intermediate this book has certainly offered me the incentive to spend more time learning more about AWS but most certainly more about how I can leverage my AWS DevOps skills on mobile platforms as well as the traditional infrastructure type platforms.