[Attn Rails noobs] Free online course starts Friday!

[metageoff]

Software Engineering for SaaS
Armando Fox, David Patterson
This course teaches the engineering fundamentals for long-lived
software using the highly-productive Agile development method for
Software as a Service (SaaS) using Ruby on Rails.

- Technologies used include Rails, Cucumber, RSpec, Heroku and more!
- Instructors are profs at UC Berkely
- include assignment work and exams
- no credit but rather, and I paraphrase here, a "Non binding
affirmation of completion" if you attain the min standard.
- video on demand courseware - not live
- there is a textbook ($10) and this options but is the only cost for
the course other than your time!
- you download a VirtualBox VM and work in that.
- 5 weeks long.

If interested check out before Friday: https://www.coursera.org/course/saas
Info on the textbook and other courseware see http://beta.saasbook.info/

BTW - if you are an established rubyist/rails guru this might be a
slow at first as it appears they teach rails from the ground up at the
start.

Geoff

[Michael Prendergast]

Nice find Geoff! 

Here's some quotes from students who took the course in February: 

--> https://docs.google.com/document/d/1KZwT3Ub6koeXuG9_5rSVdmEfWo_thfTuOxYE42V3BnM/edit?pli=1 

Didn't find a syllabus anywhere though, but looks interesting.

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[Alain Achkar]

Thanks a lot Geoff for sharing this!
Thanks to you, I've signed up.
Alain

On May 15, 10:25 am, metageoff <glong...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Software Engineering for SaaS
> Armando Fox, David Patterson
> This course teaches the engineering fundamentals for long-lived
> software using the highly-productive Agile development method for
> Software as a Service (SaaS) using Ruby on Rails.
>
> - Technologies used include Rails, Cucumber, RSpec, Heroku and more!
> - Instructors are profs at UC Berkely
> - include assignment work and exams
> - no credit but rather, and I paraphrase here, a "Non binding
> affirmation of completion" if you attain the min standard.
> - video on demand courseware - not live
> - there is a textbook ($10) and this options but is the only cost for
> the course other than your time!
> - you download a VirtualBox VM and work in that.
> - 5 weeks long.
>
> If interested check out before Friday:https://www.coursera.org/course/saas

> Info on the textbook and other courseware seehttp://beta.saasbook.info/

[Gabriel Castro]

I took the course for fun last time around and I would definitely recommend. If you're new to Ruby and Rails it's challenging enough for quite interesting. For those of us that've been doing it for a while it should be easy but it was still fun to do the assignments.

[Geoff Longman]

A few people in our office are taking it for sh$ts and giggles.

G

On Wed, May 16, 2012 at 12:21 PM, Gabriel Castro <gabriel...@gmail.com> wrote:

I took the course for fun last time around and I would definitely recommend. If you're new to Ruby and Rails it's challenging enough for quite interesting. For those of us that've been doing it for a while it should be easy but it was still fun to do the assignments.

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Geoff

[Alain Achkar]

This is an excellent course.  It was fun and a really good challenge.  Moreover, it was fun knowing that ~25,000 people registered for the course and might be reading your comments on the forums (but I don't know how many actually made it to the end :)

I highly recommend it.

• If you're a beginner with no previous Ruby or Rails experience, it might be a bit too fast-paced and overwhelming.  Make sure you dedicate enough time for it.  When asked about the difficulty level of the course, the instructors mentioned that this is the same course that the Berkley 1st year university students are taking.  This is not a tutorial.  You are expected to work hard, just like in any other university Engineering (or other discipline) course.
• If you're an intermediate, it's a nice way to consolidate or unify all your knowledge about the current tools, technologies and methodologies used in a SaaS app.
• If you're an expert, you can help by answering questions on the forums - they need community TAs.

It will be given again starting this Friday July 13th.

[Geoff Longman]

I took the last offering and enjoyed it. It wasn't too challenging for me but I've been doing Rails for a long time. That said, I did get to play with some tech I had been meaning to check out but never made the time for. Namely, rspec and cucumber.

I can see how total newcomers to Ruby and Rails might get lost though. Moves very fast. Looks like the Community TAs were of great help to people who got in over their heads.

Geoff

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Geoff Longman

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