Book review: Learn Amaozn Web Services in a Month of Lunches

content/reviews/books/learn-amazon-web-services-in-a-month-of-lunches.md

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+title = "Learn Amazon Web Services In A Month Of Lunches"
+date = 2020-12-31
+
+[taxonomies]
+tags = ["books", "reviews", "aws", "it", "2020 challenge"]
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+
+[GoodReads Summary](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34013923-learn-amazon-web-services-in-a-month-of-lunches):
+
+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.
+
+<!-- more -->
+
+{{ stars(stars=2) }}
+
+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+  still up to date -- some references are really out of date already, like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.