CS 194-4 Software as a Service using Ruby on Rails - Fall 2008

This course is an upper division, letter graded version of our previous CS98-10/CS198-10 (Intro to Web 2.0 Development using Ruby on Rails). That course will be offered again in Spring 08; materials from previous iteration, and many other useful resources for RoR developers at Cal, can be found here.

Course goals: students will...

understand the new challenges, opportunities, and open problems of SaaS relative to "traditional" methodologies
take an SaaS project from conception thru planning, development, assessment/testing, deployment, and operations, experiencing the attendant challenges of each stage, using RoR for development and Cloud Computing for deployment
understand and use agile development methodologies and tools, including low-fi UI sketching, user stories, planning using the 'velocity' method, Collaboration/Responsibility Cards, version control for team-based development, and management tools for cloud-computing environments
understand and apply fundamental programming constructs such as higher-order functions, metaprogramming, reflection, etc. to improve the maintainability, modularity and reusability of their code

Administrivia

Time: Tu/Th 5:00-6:30pm, 306 Soda
TA Office Hours: Mon/Wed 11:00-2:00, Fri 1:00-3:00, 277 Soda
Professor Office Hours: Wed 4:00, 413 Soda
Instructors: Armando Fox, Will Sobel, Dave Patterson
Grading: 4 units, letter graded
CCN: 26617
Prerequisites: CS61A & CS61B, or equivalent experience
Grading basis:

30% H

Office hours: (times TBA) in 413 Soda.
Staffed lab hours: times and locations TBA

Click here for detailed Syllabus including pre-readings, assignment due dates, etc.

Required and Recommended Textbooks and Software

NOTE 1: The full text of some of these books is available free online to UCB students via O'Reilly Safari Online, if you access it from an on-campus IP address or configure your Web proxy to access it from off-campus. If you choose to buy the print version, we recommend buying it at a discount through O'Reilly Safari Online or directly from Amazon (the prices are comparable).

NOTE 2: Also check the RAD Lab's Ruby on Rails wiki page for more tips, resources, tools, etc. available to UCB students.

Required book: [LR] Learning Ruby, by Michael Fitzgerald (O'Reilly Media, 2007). Online at O'Reilly Safari Online or buy print version there or at Amazon
Required book: [RW] The Rails Way, by Obie Fernandez (Addison-Wesley, 2007) (print version only).
Required book: [AR] Advanced Rails by Brad Ediger (O'Reilly Media, 2008); online at O'Reilly Safari Online or buy the print version there or at Amazon
Recommended Book: [PR] Programming Ruby by David Thomas & Wesley Hunt (Addison-Wesley, 2001). Available free online.

Recommended Book: [Ag] Agile Web Development With Rails, 3rd ed., by David Heinemeier Hansson (Pragmatic Programmers, 2008)- if you want a more tutorial introduction to Ruby and Rails. Available as a PDF on their website (not free; book is still in beta, and purchasers of the PDF get free PDF updates and a discount on the print edition coming later if they decide to buy it). Note: If you decide to get this, be sure to get the THIRD EDITION, as earlier editions don't cover the significant changes in Rails 2.0.
Recommended Book: Simply Rails 2 by Patrick Lenz (Sitepoint, 2008)
Recommended books that cover related (non-RoR) Web technologies (available free via O'Reilly Safari Online):

Head First HTML with CSS and XHTML: a good primer on XHTML and CSS
Learning SQL: good start if you have no prior SQL experience.
The Art & Science of CSS: currently (11/08) being given away free by the publisher! Not an introductory book on CSS (read "Head First" first) but has some good examples of more advanced CSS tricks and techniques.

Courseware

Required Web resource: PeepCode - licenses to be provided to registered students during first week of class
Required Software: this page lists the software you'll need to install (Windows & Mac)

Assignments

Each assignment is due at 11:59 pm the Monday night prior to the lecture indicated. So, e.g., Lab 1 is due 11:59pm Monday 9/8/08. Start the assignments early, or you won't be able to get a TA's attention in time if the lab gets crowded! Don't leave it til Monday morning!

In general, there's a 25% penalty if turned in up to 24 hours late, 50% if up to 48 hours late. No credit if turned in more than 48 hours late. All assignments count toward your grade.

Hello World on Rails; a simple model and some tests. Create an account and login on the assignments server to get it.
CRUDding a model, simple associations
Model validations, writing your own behavior-driven development tests
<<CANCELLED>> Was: Refactoring
Tuning part 1: identifying performance bottleneck points
Tuning part 2: making performance suck less

Project Wiki - http://ucbcs194.pbwiki.com/

Final project milestones:

Initial user stories, lo-fi UI sketches, and RSpec test skeletons for your final project app
Check in and deploy your app