Best of
Engineering

2021

Liftoff: Elon Musk and the Desperate Early Days That Launched SpaceX


Eric Berger - 2021
    Less than 20 years after its founding, it boasts the largest constellation of commercial satellites in orbit, has pioneered reusable rockets, and in 2020 became the first private company to launch human beings into orbit. Half a century after the space race it is private companies, led by SpaceX, standing alongside NASA pushing forward into the cosmos, and laying the foundation for our exploration of other worlds.But before it became one of the most powerful players in the aerospace industry, SpaceX was a fledgling startup, scrambling to develop a single workable rocket before the money ran dry. The engineering challenge was immense; numerous other private companies had failed similar attempts. And even if SpaceX succeeded, they would then have to compete for government contracts with titans such as Lockheed Martin and Boeing, who had tens of thousands of employees and tens of billions of dollars in annual revenue. SpaceX had fewer than 200 employees and the relative pittance of $100 million in the bank.In Liftoff, Eric Berger, senior space editor at Ars Technica, takes readers inside the wild early days that made SpaceX. Focusing on the company’s first four launches of the Falcon 1 rocket, he charts the bumpy journey from scrappy underdog to aerospace pioneer. We travel from company headquarters in El Segundo, to the isolated Texas ranchland where they performed engine tests, to Kwajalein, the tiny atoll in the Pacific where SpaceX launched the Falcon 1. Berger has reported on SpaceX for more than a decade, enjoying unparalleled journalistic access to the company’s inner workings. Liftoff is the culmination of these efforts, drawing upon exclusive interviews with dozens of former and current engineers, designers, mechanics, and executives, including Elon Musk. The enigmatic Musk, who founded the company with the dream of one day settling Mars, is the fuel that propels the book, with his daring vision for the future of space.Filled with never-before-told stories of SpaceX’s turbulent beginning, Liftoff is a saga of cosmic proportions.

The Great Stink: How Joseph Bazalgette Solved London's Poop Pollution Problem


Colleen Paeff - 2021
    What is creating this revolting smell? The answer is gross: the river is full of poop. But the smell isn’t the worst problem. Every few years, cholera breaks out, and thousands of people die. Could there be a connection between the foul water and the deadly disease? One engineer dreams of making London a cleaner, healthier place. His name is Joseph Bazalgette. His grand plan to create a new sewer system to clean the river is an engineering marvel. And his sewers will save lives. Nothing stinky about that.

The Bullish Case for Bitcoin


Vijay Boyapati - 2021
    

Flying Blind: Boeing's Max Tragedy and the Lost Soul of an American Icon


Peter Robison - 2021
    The largest exporter in the US, it played a central role in the early days of commercial flight, World War II bombing missions, and moon landings. It remains a linchpin in the awesome routine of air travel today. But the two crashes of its 737 MAX 8, in 2018 and 2019, exposed a shocking pattern of malfeasance, leading to the biggest crisis in the company's history. How did things go so horribly wrong at Boeing?Flying Blind is the definitive expos� of a corporate scandal that has transfixed the world. It reveals how a broken corporate culture paved the way for disaster, losses that were altogether avoidable. Drawing from aviation insiders, as well as exclusive interviews with senior Boeing staff, past and present, it shows how in its race to beat Airbus, Boeing skimped on testing, outsourced critical software to unreliable third-parties, and convinced regulators to put planes into service without properly equipping pilots to fly them. In the chill that it cast over its workplace, it offers a parable for a corporate America that puts the interests of shareholders over customers, employees, and communities.This is a searing account of how a once-iconic company fell prey to a win-at-all-costs mentality, destabilizing an industry and needlessly sacrificing 350 lives.

Androids: The Team That Built the Android Operating System


Chet Haase - 2021
    But they couldn't get investors interested. Today, Android is a large team at Google, shipping an operating system (including camera software) to over three billion devices worldwide.This is the inside story, told by the people who made it happen.“What are the essential ingredients that lead a small team to build software at the sheer scale and impact of Android? We may never fully know, but this first person account is probably the closest set of clues we have.”–Dave Burke, VP of Android Engineering“Androids captures a strong picture of what the early development of Android, as well as the Android team, was like.”–Dianne Hackborn, Android Framework Engineer“Androids is the engaging tale of a motley group of coders with a passion to make insanely great products who banged out the operating system when that idea seemed nuts.True to his geek genes, Chet Haase tells this remarkable tale of technical and business success from the trenches, an inspiring, massive collective effort of dozens of programmers who flipped their seemingly late timing to their advantage, and presaged a generation of platform builders. Read Androids to discover what it takes to create a hot tech team that shipped a product running today on more than 3 billion devices.”–Jonathan Littman, co-author of The Entrepreneurs Faces: How Makers, Visionaries and Outsiders Succeed, and author of The Fugitive Game

Confessions of a Recovering Engineer: Transportation for a Strong Town


Charles L. Marohn Jr. - 2021
    Marohn Jr. delivers an accessible and engaging exploration of America's transportation system, laying bare the reasons why it no longer works as it once did, and how to modernize transportation to better serve local communities.You'll discover real-world examples of poor design choices and how those choices have dramatic and tragic effects on the lives of the people who use them. You'll also find case studies and examples of design improvements that have revitalized communities and improved safety.This important book shows you:The values of the transportation professions, how they are applied in the design process, and how those priorities differ from those of the public. How the standard approach to transportation ensures the maximum amount of traffic congestion possible is created each day, and how to fight that congestion on a budget. Bottom-up techniques for spending less and getting higher returns on transportation projects, all while improving quality of life for residents. Perfect for anyone interested in why transportation systems work - and fail to work - the way they do, Confessions of a Recovering Engineer is a fascinating insider's peek behind the scenes of America's transportation systems.

Crafting Interpreters


Robert Nystrom - 2021
    For many, their only experience with that corner of computer science was a terrifying "compilers" class that they suffered through in undergrad and tried to blot from their memory as soon as they had scribbled their last NFA to DFA conversion on the final exam.That fearsome reputation belies a field that is rich with useful techniques and not so difficult as some of its practitioners might have you believe. A better understanding of how programming languages are built will make you a stronger software engineer and teach you concepts and data structures you'll use the rest of your coding days. You might even have fun.This book teaches you everything you need to know to implement a full-featured, efficient scripting language. You’ll learn both high-level concepts around parsing and semantics and gritty details like bytecode representation and garbage collection. Your brain will light up with new ideas, and your hands will get dirty and calloused.Starting from main(), you will build a language that features rich syntax, dynamic typing, garbage collection, lexical scope, first-class functions, closures, classes, and inheritance. All packed into a few thousand lines of clean, fast code that you thoroughly understand because you wrote each one yourself.

Building Mobile Apps at Scale: 39 Engineering Challenges


Gergely Orosz - 2021
    By scale, we mean having numbers of users in the millions and being built by large engineering teams.For mobile engineers, this book is a blueprint for modern app engineering approaches. For non-mobile engineers and managers, it is a resource with which to build empathy and appreciation for the complexity of world-class mobile engineering.

Learning Go: An Idiomatic Approach to Real-World Go Programming


Jon Bodner - 2021
    While there are plenty of tutorials available that teach Go's syntax to developers with experience in other programming languages, tutorials aren't enough. They don't teach Go's idioms, so developers end up recreating patterns that don't make sense in a Go context. This practical guide provides the essential background you need to write clear and idiomatic Go.No matter your level of experience, you'll learn how to think like a Go developer. Author Jon Bodner introduces the design patterns experienced Go developers have adopted and explores the rationale for using them. You'll also get a preview of Go's upcoming generics support and how it fits into the language.Learn how to write idiomatic code in Go and design a Go projectUnderstand the reasons for the design decisions in GoSet up a Go development environment for a solo developer or teamLearn how and when to use reflection, unsafe, and cgoDiscover how Go's features allow the language to run efficientlyKnow which Go features you should use sparingly or not at all

Understanding Distributed Systems: What every developer should know about large distributed applications


Roberto Vitillo - 2021
    It's not that there is a lack of information out there. You can find academic papers, engineering blogs, and even books on the subject. The problem is that the available information is spread out all over the place, and if you were to put it on a spectrum from theory to practice, you would find a lot of material at the two ends, but not much in the middle.That is why I decided to write a book to teach the fundamentals of distributed systems so that you don’t have to spend countless hours scratching your head to understand how everything fits together. This is the guide I wished existed when I first started out, and it's based on my experience building large distributed systems that scale to millions of requests per second and billions of devices.If you develop the back-end of web or mobile applications (or would like to!), this book is for you. When building distributed systems, you need to be familiar with the network stack, data consistency models, scalability and reliability patterns, and much more. Although you can build applications without knowing any of that, you will end up spending hours debugging and re-designing their architecture, learning lessons that you could have acquired in a much faster and less painful way.

Mimic Makers: Biomimicry Inventors Inspired by Nature


Kristen Nordstrom - 2021
    Meet ten real-life scientists, engineers, and designers who imitate plants and animals to create amazing new technology. An engineer shapes the nose of his train like a kingfisher's beak. A scientist models her solar cell on the mighty leaf. Discover how we copy nature's good ideas to solve real-world problems!"Amazing! . . . Love that the book features the scientists and inventors, and that there is a diverse set of them. I find that the best way to introduce people of any age to biomimicry is to tell the stories of the stars: the organisms and their biomimics!" --Janine Benyus, co-founder of the Biomimicry Institute

Staff Engineer: Leadership Beyond the Management Track


Will Larson - 2021
    At that career level, you’ll no longer be required to work towards the next promotion, and being promoted beyond it is exceptional rather than expected. At that point your career path will branch, and you have to decide between remaining at your current level, continuing down the path of technical excellence to become a Staff Engineer, or switching into engineering management. Of course, the specific titles vary by company, and you can replace “Senior Engineer” and “Staff Engineer” with whatever titles your company prefers. Over the past few years we’ve seen a flurry of books unlocking the engineering management career path, like Camille Fournier’s The Manager’s Path, Julie Zhuo’s The Making of a Manager, Lara Hogan’s Resilient Management and my own, An Elegant Puzzle. The management career isn’t an easy one, but increasingly there are maps available for navigating it. On the other hand, the transition into Staff Engineer, and its further evolutions like Principal and Distinguished Engineer, remains challenging and undocumented. What are the skills you need to develop to reach Staff Engineer? Are technical abilities alone sufficient to reach and succeed in that role? How do most folks reach this role? What is your manager’s role in helping you along the way? Will you enjoy being a Staff Engineer or you will toil for years to achieve a role that doesn’t suit you? "Staff Engineer: Leadership beyond the management track" is a pragmatic look at attaining and operating in these Staff-plus roles.

Rust for Rustaceans


Jon Gjengset - 2021
    It covers everything you need to build and maintain larger code bases, write powerful and flexible applications and libraries, and confidently expand the scope and complexity of your projects.Author Jon Gjengset takes you deep into the Rust programming language, dissecting core topics like ownership, traits, concurrency, and unsafe code. You’ll explore key concepts like type layout and trait coherence, delve into the inner workings of concurrent programming and asynchrony with async/await, and take a tour of the world of no_std programming. Gjengset also provides expert guidance on API design, testing strategies, and error handling, and will help develop your understanding of foreign function interfaces, object safety, procedural macros, and much more.You'll Learn: How to design reliable, idiomatic, and ergonomic Rust programs based on best principles Effective use of declarative and procedural macros, and the difference between them How asynchrony works in Rust – all the way from the Pin and Waker types used in manual implementations of Futures, to how async/await saves you from thinking about most of those words What it means for code to be unsafe, and best practices for writing and interacting with unsafe functions and traits How to organize and configure more complex Rust projects so that they integrate nicely with the rest of the ecosystem How to write Rust code that can interoperate with non-Rust libraries and systems, or run in constrained and embedded environments Brimming with practical, pragmatic insights that you can immediately apply, Rust for Rustaceans helps you do more with Rust, while also teaching you its underlying mechanisms.

Kill It with Fire: Manage Aging Computer Systems (and Future Proof Modern Ones)


Marianne Bellotti - 2021
    Aging computer systems present complex technical challenges for organizations both large and small, and Kill It with Fire provides sound strategies for spearheading modernization efforts.Kill It with Fire examines aging computer systems, the evolution of technology over time, and how organizations can modernize, maintain, and future-proof their current systems.In playful and engaging prose, Marianne Bellotti uses real-world case studies to illustrate the technical challenges of modernizing complex legacy systems, as well as the organizational challenges of time-intensive maintenance efforts. The book explains how to evaluate existing architecture, create upgrade plans, and handle communication structures. Team exercises and historical analyses of complex computer systems make this a valuable resource for those in both older and newer companies, and will help readers restore or create systems built to evolve as time goes on.

The Computers That Made Britain


Tim Danton - 2021
    Those machines would inspire a generation.The Computers That Made Britain tells the story of 19 of those computers – and what happened behind the scenes. With dozens of new interviews, discover the tales of missed deadlines, technical faults, business interference, and the unheralded geniuses who brought to the UK everything from the Dragon 32 and ZX81, to the Amstrad CPC 464 and Commodore Amiga.

Modern Software Engineering: Doing What Works to Build Better Software Faster


David Farley - 2021
    Writing for programmers, managers, and technical leads at all levels of experience, Farley illuminates durable principles at the heart of effective software development. He distills the discipline into two core exercises: learning and exploration and managing complexity. For each, he defines principles that can help you improve everything from your mindset to the quality of your code, and describes approaches proven to promote success. Farley's ideas and techniques cohere into a unified, scientific, and foundational approach to solving practical software development problems within realistic economic constraints. This general, durable, and pervasive approach to software engineering can help you solve problems you haven't encountered yet, using today's technologies and tomorrow's. It offers you deeper insight into what you do every day, helping you create better software, faster, with more pleasure and personal fulfillment. Clarify what you're trying to accomplish Choose your tools based on sensible criteria Organize work and systems to facilitate continuing incremental progress Evaluate your progress toward thriving systems, not just more legacy code Gain more value from experimentation and empiricism Stay in control as systems grow more complex Achieve rigor without too much rigidity Learn from history and experience Distinguish good new software development ideas from bad ones

Becoming a Data Head: How to Think, Speak, and Understand Data Science, Statistics, and Machine Learning


Alex J. Gutman - 2021
    You'll become a more valuable employee and make your organization more successful.Thomas H. Davenport, Research Fellow, Author of Competing on Analytics, Big Data @ Work, and The AI AdvantageYou've heard the hype around data--now get the facts.In Becoming a Data Head: How to Think, Speak, and Understand Data Science, Statistics, and Machine Learning, award-winning data scientists Alex Gutman and Jordan Goldmeier pull back the curtain on data science and give you the language and tools necessary to talk and think critically about it.You'll learn how to:Think statistically and understand the role variation plays in your life and decision making Speak intelligently and ask the right questions about the statistics and results you encounter in the workplace Understand what's really going on with machine learning, text analytics, deep learning, and artificial intelligence Avoid common pitfalls when working with and interpreting data Becoming a Data Head is a complete guide for data science in the workplace: covering everything from the personalities you'll work with to the math behind the algorithms. The authors have spent years in data trenches and sought to create a fun, approachable, and eminently readable book. Anyone can become a Data Head--an active participant in data science, statistics, and machine learning. Whether you're a business professional, engineer, executive, or aspiring data scientist, this book is for you.

Harvard Business Review Project Management Handbook: How to Launch, Lead, and Sponsor Successful Projects (HBR Handbooks)


Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez - 2021
    

The Big Book of Small Python Projects


Al Sweigart - 2021
    The 100+ short programs in Big Book of Small Python Projects are designed to help beginning-to-intermediate programmers expand their knowledge of how to deploy Python creatively and effectively by offering coding examples that will help them to tackle their own coding challenges.The 100+ short, complete Python programs in this book are designed to help beginning-to-intermediate Python programmers broaden their skills by providing a diverse set of coding examples they can study, emulate, and draw inspiration from. The programs range from classic card and board games and mazes, to math and probability demos, and mad libs. The author includes the complete code for each program, as well as commentary and suggestions for how to modify and experiment with code.

Production Kubernetes: Building Successful Application Platforms


Josh Rosso - 2021
    In this practical book, four software engineers from VMware bring their shared experiences running Kubernetes in production and provide insight on key challenges and best practices.The brilliance of Kubernetes is how configurable and extensible the system is, from pluggable runtimes to storage integrations. For platform engineers, software developers, infosec, network engineers, storage engineers, and others, this book examines how the path to success with Kubernetes involves a variety of technology, pattern, and abstraction considerations.With this book, you will:Understand what the path to production looks like when using KubernetesExamine where gaps exist in your current Kubernetes strategyLearn Kubernetes's essential building blocks--and their trade-offsUnderstand what's involved in making Kubernetes a viable location for applicationsLearn better ways to navigate the cloud native landscape

Designing Cloud Data Platforms


Danil Zburivsky - 2021
    Discover patterns for ingesting data from a variety of sources, then learn to harness pre-built services provided by cloud vendors.Summary Centralized data warehouses, the long-time defacto standard for housing data for analytics, are rapidly giving way to multi-faceted cloud data platforms. Companies that embrace modern cloud data platforms benefit from an integrated view of their business using all of their data and can take advantage of advanced analytic practices to drive predictions and as yet unimagined data services. Designing Cloud Data Platforms is a hands-on guide to envisioning and designing a modern scalable data platform that takes full advantage of the flexibility of the cloud. As you read, you’ll learn the core components of a cloud data platform design, along with the role of key technologies like Spark and Kafka Streams. You’ll also explore setting up processes to manage cloud-based data, keep it secure, and using advanced analytic and BI tools to analyze it. Purchase of the print book includes a free eBook in PDF, Kindle, and ePub formats from Manning Publications. About the technology Well-designed pipelines, storage systems, and APIs eliminate the complicated scaling and maintenance required with on-prem data centers. Once you learn the patterns for designing cloud data platforms, you’ll maximize performance no matter which cloud vendor you use. About the book In Designing Cloud Data Platforms, Danil Zburivsky and Lynda Partner reveal a six-layer approach that increases flexibility and reduces costs. Discover patterns for ingesting data from a variety of sources, then learn to harness pre-built services provided by cloud vendors. What's inside     Best practices for structured and unstructured data sets     Cloud-ready machine learning tools     Metadata and real-time analytics     Defensive architecture, access, and security About the reader For data professionals familiar with the basics of cloud computing, and Hadoop or Spark. About the author Danil Zburivsky has over 10 years of experience designing and supporting large-scale data infrastructure for enterprises across the globe. Lynda Partner is the VP of Analytics-as-a-Service at Pythian, and has been on the business side of data for over 20 years. Table of Contents 1 Introducing the data platform 2 Why a data platform and not just a data warehouse 3 Getting bigger and leveraging the Big 3: Amazon, Microsoft Azure, and Google 4 Getting data into the platform 5 Organizing and processing data 6 Real-time data processing and analytics 7 Metadata layer architecture 8 Schema management 9 Data access and security 10 Fueling business value with data platforms

The Tech Executive Operating System: Creating an R&D Organization That Moves the Needle


Aviv Ben-Yosef - 2021
    Creating a culture that understands and supports both the technical and the nontechnical is a refined skill that can be difficult to master even for a leader with years of experience. The Tech Executive Operating System helps you apply your personal expertise and build a thriving R&D organization that moves the needle.Tech companies spend an average of 15% of their revenue on R&D. As they grow, they find the return on this large investment decreases at a fast pace. Executives and leaders of companies big and small are at a loss and seeking guidance. Author Ben-Yosef expertly walks you through the need to set goals, translate business objectives to R&D terms, and establish the organizational structures and processes to create the biggest impact. The Tech Executive Operating System is a rare book that provides useful yardsticks to measure the progress and contributions of managers, teams, and individuals in your organization.Tech executives, first-time startup founders, managers, CEOs, and other non-technical founders of startups who want to better understand a significant part of their organization all have invaluable knowledge to gain from The Tech Executive Operating System. Ben-Yosef's thorough research and real-world examples enhance the lessons and make your goals clear. Engineering organizations can be vastly improved by this multi-faceted approach, and the future of tech is calling for it.What You Will LearnCreate a toolkit for your employees to put in place a remarkable engineering teamDiscover an impact-oriented approach to goal-setting that will be especially usefully for remote employeesTurn the R&D department from a cost center to an innovation centerWho This Book is ForTech executives and their direct reports, first-timer startup founders, junior leaders in tech organizations, middle-managers in big enterprises, CEOs and other non-technical founders of startups who want to better understand a big part of their organization and how best to address it.

The Programmer's Brain


Felienne Hermans - 2021
    This unique book teaches you concrete techniques rooted in cognitive science that will improve the way you learn and think about code.In The Programmer’s Brain: What every programmer needs to know about cognition you will learn:* Fast and effective ways to master new programming languages* Speed reading skills to quickly comprehend new code* Techniques to unravel the meaning of complex code* Ways to learn new syntax and keep it memorized* Writing code that is easy for others to read* Picking the right names for your variables* Making your codebase more understandable to newcomers* Onboarding new developers to your teamLearn how to optimize your brain’s natural cognitive processes to read code more easily, write code faster, and pick up new languages in much less time. This book will help you through the confusion you feel when faced with strange and complex code, and explain a codebase in ways that can make a new team member productive in days!about the technologyUnderstanding the cognitive functions that govern the way your brain thinks about coding will help you work smarter, not harder. You’ll improve your productivity, reduce your need for constant rewrites, and say goodbye to spending late nights struggling with new languages.about the bookThe Programmer’s Brain explores the way your brain works when it’s thinking about code. In it, you’ll master practical ways to apply these cognitive principles to your daily programming life. You’ll improve your code comprehension by turning confusion into a learning tool, and pick up awesome techniques for reading code and quickly memorizing syntax. This practical guide includes tips for creating your own flashcards and study resources that can be applied to any new language you want to master. By the time you’re done, you’ll not only be better at teaching yourself—you’ll be an expert at bringing new colleagues and junior programmers up to speed.

Cloud Native Go: Building Reliable Services in Unreliable Environments


Matthew A. Titmus - 2021
    This practical book shows you how to use Go's strengths to develop cloud native services that are scalable and resilient, even in an unpredictable environment. You'll explore the composition and construction of these applications, from lower-level features of Go to mid-level design patterns to high-level architectural considerations.Each chapter builds on the lessons of the last, walking intermediate to advanced developers through Go to construct a simple but fully featured distributed key-value store. You'll learn best practices for adopting Go as your development language for solving cloud native management and deployment issues.Learn how cloud native applications differ from other software architecturesUnderstand how Go can solve the challenges of designing scalable, distributed servicesLeverage Go's lower-level features, such as channels and goroutines, to implement a reliable cloud native serviceExplore what "service reliability" is and what it has to do with "cloud native"Apply a variety of patterns, abstractions, and tooling to build and manage complex distributed systems

Good Code, Bad Code


Tom Long - 2021
    In Good Code, Bad Code you’ll learn how to boost your effectiveness and productivity with code development insights normally only learned through years of experience, careful mentorship, and hundreds of code reviews.In Good Code, Bad Code you’ll learn how to:+ Think about code like an effective software engineer+ Write functions that read like a well-structured sentence+ Ensure code is reliable and bug free+ Effectively unit test code+ Identify code that can cause problems and improve it+ Write code that is reusable and adaptable to new requirements+ Improve your medium and long-term productivity+ Save you and your team’s time

Grokking Machine Learning


Luis G. Serrano - 2021
    No specialist knowledge is required to tackle the hands-on exercises using Python and readily available machine learning tools. Packed with easy-to-follow Python-based exercises and mini-projects, this book sets you on the path to becoming a machine learning expert. Purchase of the print book includes a free eBook in PDF, Kindle, and ePub formats from Manning Publications. About the technology Discover powerful machine learning techniques you can understand and apply using only high school math! Put simply, machine learning is a set of techniques for data analysis based on algorithms that deliver better results as you give them more data. ML powers many cutting-edge technologies, such as recommendation systems, facial recognition software, smart speakers, and even self-driving cars. This unique book introduces the core concepts of machine learning, using relatable examples, engaging exercises, and crisp illustrations. About the book Grokking Machine Learning presents machine learning algorithms and techniques in a way that anyone can understand. This book skips the confused academic jargon and offers clear explanations that require only basic algebra. As you go, you’ll build interesting projects with Python, including models for spam detection and image recognition. You’ll also pick up practical skills for cleaning and preparing data. What's inside     Supervised algorithms for classifying and splitting data     Methods for cleaning and simplifying data     Machine learning packages and tools     Neural networks and ensemble methods for complex datasets About the reader For readers who know basic Python. No machine learning knowledge necessary. About the author Luis G. Serrano is a research scientist in quantum artificial intelligence. Previously, he was a Machine Learning Engineer at Google and Lead Artificial Intelligence Educator at Apple. Table of Contents 1 What is machine learning? It is common sense, except done by a computer 2 Types of machine learning 3 Drawing a line close to our points: Linear regression 4 Optimizing the training process: Underfitting, overfitting, testing, and regularization 5 Using lines to split our points: The perceptron algorithm 6 A continuous approach to splitting points: Logistic classifiers 7 How do you measure classification models? Accuracy and its friends 8 Using probability to its maximum: The naive Bayes model 9 Splitting data by asking questions: Decision trees 10 Combining building blocks to gain more power: Neural networks 11 Finding boundaries with style: Support vector machines and the kernel method 12 Combining models to maximize results: Ensemble learning 13 Putting it all in practice: A real-life example of data engineering and machine learning

Design Patterns for Cloud Native Applications: Patterns in Practice Using Apis, Data, Events, and Streams


Kasun Indrasiri - 2021
    The real issue is how. With this practical guide, developers will learn about the most commonly used design patterns for building cloud native applications using APIs, data, events, and streams in both greenfield and brownfield development.You'll learn how to incrementally design, develop, and deploy large and effective cloud native applications that you can manage and maintain at scale with minimal cost, time, and effort. Authors Kasun Indrasiri and Sriskandarajah Suhothayan highlight use cases that effectively demonstrate the challenges you might encounter at each step.Learn the fundamentals of cloud native applicationsExplore key cloud native communication, connectivity, and composition patternsLearn decentralized data management techniquesUse event-driven architecture to build distributed and scalable cloud native applicationsExplore the most commonly used patterns for API management and consumptionExamine some of the tools and technologies you'll need for building cloud native systems

Strategic Microservices and Monoliths


Vaughn Vernon - 2021
    But that isn't always a safe assumption: in fact, in some cases, it can be disastrous, leading to architectures that serve nobody well. Strategic Microservices and Monoliths helps business decision-makers and technical team members collaborate to clearly understand their strategic problems, and identify their optimal architectural approaches, whether those turns out to be distributed microservices, well-modularized monoliths, or coarser-grade services partway between the two.Writing for executives and IT professionals alike, leading software architecture expert Vaughn Vernon and Tomasz Jaskula guide you through making balanced architecture compositional decisions based on need and purpose rather than popular opinion, so you can maximize business value and deliver systems that evolve more easily. Throughout, the authors provide realistic application examples, showing how to construct well-designed monoliths that are maintainable and extensible, and how to decompose massively tangled legacy systems into truly effective microservices.

Introduction to System Design


Shivam Singh - 2021
    Systems design could be seen as the application of systems theory to product development. As a result, there is some overlap with the disciplines of systems analysis, systems architecture, and systems engineering.Designing software systems is a vast topic, and even a software engineer having years of experience at a top software company may not claim to be an expert on system design. Companies spend not weeks but months and hire a big team of software engineers to build such systems in real life.While this book is oriented towards Software Developers and Architects, this book can be helpful for any working in the High-Tech industry. In this, we will understand how popular products such as Instagram, Facebook Messenger, Dropbox, TinyURL, and Pastebin are designed. No prior technical knowledge is required before picking up this book.As a Product Manager or Startup Founder, having a high-level understanding of the various technologies being used in you as well as popular products across the industry would be a handy tool in your toolkit. As a Venture Capitalist, you can better analyze the capabilities of the tech teams of the startups you are investing in as well as understand how their tech stands apart from the competition.Even if you are not working directly in the Tech industry, everyone uses these products on a daily basis. Therefore, having an understanding of how these products work could help you improve your digital life and make use of these products in a better way.

All the Math You Missed: (But Need to Know for Graduate School)


Thomas A Garrity - 2021
    This bestselling book helps students fill in the gaps in their knowledge. Thomas A. Garrity explains the basic points and a few key results of all the most important undergraduate topics in mathematics, emphasizing the intuitions behind the subject. The explanations are accompanied by numerous examples, exercises and suggestions for further reading that allow the reader to test and develop their understanding of these core topics. Featuring four new chapters and many other improvements, this second edition of All the Math You Missed is an essential resource for advanced undergraduates and beginning graduate students who need to learn some serious mathematics quickly.

Ayanna Howard


Stephanie Anne Box - 2021
    Learn about Dr. Howard's influence and accomplishments in math, science, engineering and space exploration!Features: More than just an engaging story full of fun and interesting facts about Ayanna Howard, this kids book also includes vocabulary, comprehension questions, a timeline, glossary, and an extension activity for added engagement.Leveled Books: Vibrant illustrations and leveled text work together to engage children and promote reading comprehension skills. This book engages 1st-4th grade readers with science for kids, fun facts, and engaging topics like space and robots.Why Rourke Educational Media: Since 1980, Rourke Publishing Company has specialized in publishing engaging and diverse non-fiction and fiction books for children in a wide range of subjects that support reading success on a level that has no limits.

Beavers: Radical Rodents and Ecosystem Engineers


Frances Backhouse - 2021
    By cutting trees and building dams, they shape landscapes and provide valuable wetland homes for many plants and animals. These radical rodents were once almost hunted to extinction for their prized fur, but today we are building a new relationship with them, and our appreciation of the benefits they offer as habitat creators and water stewards is growing. Packed with facts and personal stories, this book looks at the beaver’s biology and behavior and illuminates their vital role as a keystone species. The beaver’s comeback is one of North America’s greatest conservation success stories and Beavers: Radical Rodents and Ecosystem Engineers introduces readers to the conservationists, scientists and young people who are working to build a better future for our furry friends.

Learn to Code by Solving Problems: A Python Programming Primer


Daniel Zingaro - 2021
    

Handmade: A Scientist’s Search for Meaning through Making


Anna Ploszajski - 2021
    However, science can’t tell us how to measure the temperature of steel just by looking at it, or how to sculpt stone into all kinds of shapes, or what it feels like to blow up a balloon of glass. Handmade tells the story of materials through making and doing. Author and material scientist Anna Ploszajski takes readers into the domain of the makers and craftspeople to understand how our most popular materials really work. Their accumulated knowledge through hands-on trial and error has been built on by generation after generation of experimenters and tinkerers, and they understand the materiality of objects far more than any scientist with a textbook.This book offers a fresh and entertaining perspective on materials science through the eyes of a young woman who is at the forefront of the field, as well as the craftspeople who have built their careers around working with certain materials. Each chapter is dedicated to an everyday material and features Anna’s accounts of learning from masters in the craft. Along the way she builds a fuller picture of materials and their place in society. She visits a female blacksmith artist to see, hear, smell and strike steel herself, explores how working with one of the most primal of materials, clay, has brought about some of the most advanced technologies and delves down to the atomic scale of glass to find out what makes it ‘glassy’. By the end, readers will have a new understanding of the materials they encounter every day and an appreciation for the skills needed to form them into the objects that are perfectly suited for the jobs they do.

Mr Shaha’s Marvellous Machines: adventures in making round the kitchen table


Alom Shaha - 2021
    Chances are you won’t need to buy the materials required for these machines because they’re all in your house right now. Every child can be an engineer with the help of Mr Shaha and his marvellous machines.Written by a science teacher and dad, Mr Shaha's Marvellous Machines is the highly anticipated sequel to Mr Shaha's Recipes for Wonder. This book gives clear, step-by-step instructions for over 15 projects. Whether you’re a master engineer or a total beginner, it will spark inspiration for fun activities to engage young people in the marvels of machinery.

The System Design Interview, 2nd Edition


Lewis C. Lin - 2021
    

A Biography of the Pixel


Alvy Ray Smith - 2021
    The bit became the universal medium, and the pixel--a particular packaging of bits--conquered the world. Henceforward, nearly every picture in the world would be composed of pixels--cell phone pictures, app interfaces, Mars Rover transmissions, book illustrations, videogames. In A Biography of the Pixel, Pixar cofounder Alvy Ray Smith argues that the pixel is the organizing principle of most modern media, and he presents a few simple but profound ideas that unify the dazzling varieties of digital image making.Smith's story of the pixel's development begins with Fourier waves, proceeds through Turing machines, and ends with the first digital movies from Pixar, DreamWorks, and Blue Sky. Today, almost all the pictures we encounter are digital--mediated by the pixel and irretrievably separated from their media; museums and kindergartens are two of the last outposts of the analog. Smith explains, engagingly and accessibly, how pictures composed of invisible stuff become visible--that is, how digital pixels convert to analog display elements. Taking the special case of digital movies to represent all of Digital Light (his term for pictures constructed of pixels), and drawing on his decades of work in the field, Smith approaches his subject from multiple angles--art, technology, entertainment, business, and history. A Biography of the Pixel is essential reading for anyone who has watched a video on a cell phone, played a videogame, or seen a movie. 400 pages of annotations, prepared by the author and available online, provide an invaluable resource for readers.

Mastering Kafka Streams and Ksqldb: Building Real-Time Data Systems by Example


Mitch Seymour - 2021
    But with Kafka Streams and ksqlDB, building stream processing applications is easy and fun. This practical guide shows data engineers how to use these tools to build highly scalable stream processing applications for moving, enriching, and transforming large amounts of data in real time.Mitch Seymour, data services engineer at Mailchimp, explains important stream processing concepts against a backdrop of several interesting business problems. You'll learn the strengths of both Kafka Streams and ksqlDB to help you choose the best tool for each unique stream processing project. Non-Java developers will find the ksqlDB path to be an especially gentle introduction to stream processing.Learn the basics of Kafka and the pub/sub communication patternBuild stateless and stateful stream processing applications using Kafka Streams and ksqlDBPerform advanced stateful operations, including windowed joins and aggregationsUnderstand how stateful processing works under the hoodLearn about ksqlDB's data integration features, powered by Kafka ConnectWork with different types of collections in ksqlDB and perform push and pull queriesDeploy your Kafka Streams and ksqlDB applications to production