AWS® For Developers For Dummies®
AWS® For Developers For Dummies®
Published by: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774, www.wiley.com
Copyright © 2017 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey
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Published simultaneously in Canada
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2017946597
ISBN: 978-1-119-37184-7
ISBN 978-1-119-37189-2 (ebk); ISBN ePDF 978-1-119-37186-1 (ebk)
Introduction
With the availability of cloud-based resources, developers today have an unprecedented opportunity to create amazing applications that previously weren’t possible. Amazon Web Services (AWS) enables developers to interact with the entire world, even when their application supports the smallest of organizations. The access to services in the cloud is amazing enough, but the access to data and other resources is now at mind-boggling levels. Unfortunately, many developers are indeed overawed by the sheer size and scope of cloud-based development, which is why you need AWS For Developers For Dummies.
This book is about making things simple. You don’t have to try to understand the entire cloud or even just AWS in a single sitting; instead, AWS For Developers For Dummies breaks down all the concepts into smaller chunks. If you want to create imaginative applications, this books helps you do so without spending frustrating hours learning the arcane AWS API beforehand. Life is short. With this book, you can create an application in just a few hours and become productive more quickly, freeing you from the drudgery of learning quite a lot to do only a little.
About This Book
The purpose of AWS For Developers For Dummies is to help you get up and running quickly. You build a test environment and install tools that let you experiment with many of the major services without a lot of effort. The focus of this book is to get you started doing something by using just a few of the services. One of the hardest parts of working with AWS is that so many services are available (more than 100 of them) that a developer might go nuts just trying to figure out where to begin. This book relieves you of that problem.
Most of the book examples focus on three kinds of AWS interaction: through the console, through the Command Line Interface (CLI), and programmatically. In most cases, these are the three ways developers begin working with AWS. The console lets you see how AWS works from an administrative level. Using CLI helps you understand the AWS functionality at a deeper level, plus you can use it to create scripts. Finally, this book uses Python Notebooks to make experimentation very easy. You don’t have to write complete applications to see something happen; just a few lines of code will do. So, in contrast to other programming projects, in which you spent hours writing code just to see the project die because of the smallest typo, this book helps you attain something significant without much typing at all.
To help you absorb the concepts, this book uses the following conventions:
❯❯ Text that you’re meant to type just as it appears in the book is in bold. The exception is when you’re working through a step list: Because each step is bold, the text to type is not bold.
❯❯ Words for you to type that are also in italics are meant as placeholders; you need to replace them with something that works for you. For example, if you see “Type Your Name and press Enter,” you need to replace Your Name with your actual name.
❯❯ I also use italics for terms I define. This means that you don’t have to rely on other sources to provide the definitions you need.
❯❯ Web addresses and programming code appear in monofont. If you’re reading a digital version of this book on a device connected to the Internet, you can click the live link to visit a website, like this: http://www.dummies.com.
❯❯ When you need to click command sequences, you see them separated by a special arrow, like this: File ⇒ New File, which tells you to click File and then New File.
Foolish Assumptions
You might have a hard time believing that I’ve assumed anything about you – after all, I haven’t even met you yet! Although most assumptions are indeed foolish, I made certain assumptions to provide a starting point for the book.
The first assumption is that you’re familiar with the platform you want to use, because the book doesn’t offer any guidance in this regard. This book doesn’t discuss any platform-specific issues. You really do need to know how to install applications, use applications, and generally work with your chosen platform before you begin working with this book.
You also need to be familiar with your browser and understand how to interact with browser-based applications. Sprinkled throughout are numerous references