Best of
Programming-Languages
2015
The Go Programming Language
Alan A.A. Donovan - 2015
It has been winning converts from dynamic language enthusiasts as well as users of traditional compiled languages. The former appreciate the robustness and efficiency that Go's lightweight type system brings to their code; the latter find Go's simplicity and fast tools a refreshing change. Thanks to its well-designed standard libraries and its excellent support for concurrent programming, Go is fast becoming the language of choice for distributed systems. The Go Programming Language is the definitive book on Go for the working programmer. It assumes no prior knowledge of Go, nor any other specific programming language, so you'll find it an accessible guide whether you come from JavaScript, Ruby, Python, Java, or C++. The book will quickly get you started using Go effectively from the beginning, and by the end, you will know how to use it well to write clear, idiomatic and efficient programs to solve real-world problems. You'll understand not just how to use its standard libraries, but how they work, and how to apply the same design techniques to your own projects. The earlier chapters will introduce you to the basic concepts of Go programming---numbers, strings, functions---while at the same time presenting important computer science concepts like recursion, and useful examples of graphics, UTF-8, and error handling. The chapters on methods and interfaces will show you a new way to think about object-oriented programming; the chapter on concurrency explains why concurrency is so important in modern programming, and how Go helps you handle it well. You'll also learn about Go's pragmatic but effective approach to testing; how to build, test, and manage projects using the go tool, and the art of metaprogramming using reflection. The book contains hundreds of interesting and practical examples that cover the whole language and a wide range of applications. The code samples from the book are available for download from gopl.io.
Programming Rust: Fast, Safe Systems Development
Jim Blandy - 2015
Rust's modern, flexible types ensure your program is free of null pointer dereferences, double frees, dangling pointers, and similar bugs, all at compile time, without runtime overhead. In multi-threaded code, Rust catches data races at compile time, making concurrency much easier to use.Written by two experienced systems programmers, this book explains how Rust manages to bridge the gap between performance and safety, and how you can take advantage of it. Topics include:How Rust represents values in memory (with diagrams)Complete explanations of ownership, moves, borrows, and lifetimesCargo, rustdoc, unit tests, and how to publish your code on crates.io, Rust's public package repositoryHigh-level features like generic code, closures, collections, and iterators that make Rust productive and flexibleConcurrency in Rust: threads, mutexes, channels, and atomics, all much safer to use than in C or C++Unsafe code, and how to preserve the integrity of ordinary code that uses itExtended examples illustrating how pieces of the language fit together
You Don't Know JS: Up & Going
Kyle Simpson - 2015
With the "You Don’t Know JS" book series, you’ll get a more complete understanding of JavaScript, including trickier parts of the language that many experienced JavaScript programmers simply avoid.The series’ first book, Up & Going, provides the necessary background for those of you with limited programming experience. By learning the basic building blocks of programming, as well as JavaScript’s core mechanisms, you’ll be prepared to dive into the other, more in-depth books in the series—and be well on your way toward true JavaScript.With this book you will:
Learn the essential programming building blocks, including operators, types, variables, conditionals, loops, and functions
Become familiar with JavaScript's core mechanisms such as values, function closures, this, and prototypes
Get an overview of other books in the series—and learn why it’s important to understand all parts of JavaScript
Metaprogramming Elixir
Chris McCord - 2015
Maybe you’ve played with the basics or written a few macros. Now you want to take it to the next level. This book is a guided series of metaprogramming tutorials that take you step by step to metaprogramming mastery. You’ll extend Elixir with powerful features and write faster, more maintainable programs in ways unmatched by other languages.You’ll start with the basics of Elixir’s metaprogramming system and find out how macros interact with Elixir’s abstract format. Then you’ll extend Elixir with your own first-class features, write a testing framework, and discover how Elixir treats source code as building blocks, rather than rote lines of instructions. You’ll continue your journey by using advanced code generation to create essential libraries in strikingly few lines of code. Finally, you’ll create domain-specific languages and learn when and where to apply your skills effectively.When you’re done, you will have mastered metaprogramming, gained insights into Elixir’s internals, and have the confidence to leverage macros to their full potential in your own projects.
Haskell Programming From First Principles
Christopher Allen - 2015
I've spent the last couple years actively teaching Haskell online and in person. Along the way, I started keeping notes on exercises and methods of teaching specific concepts and techniques in Haskell that eventually turned into my guide for learning haskell. That experience led me to work on this book.If you are new to programming entirely, Haskell is a great first language. You may have noticed the trend of "Functional Programming in [Imperative Language]" books and tutorials and learning Haskell gets right to the heart of what functional programming is. Languages such as Java are gradually adopting functional concepts, but most such languages were not designed to be functional languages, after all. We would not encourage you to learn Haskell as an only language, but because Haskell is a pure functional language, it is a fertile environment for mastering functional programming techniques. That way of thinking and problem solving is useful, no matter what other languages you might know or learn.Haskell is not a difficult language to use. Quite the opposite. I'm now able to tackle problems that I couldn't have tackled when I was primarily a Clojure, Common Lisp, or Python user. Haskell is difficult to teach effectively.
A Smarter Way to Learn HTML & CSS: Learn it faster. Remember it longer.
Mark Myers - 2015
Short chapters are paired with free interactive online exercises to teach the fundamentals of HTML and CSS. Written for beginners, useful for experienced developers who want to sharpen their skills. Prepares the reader to code a website of medium complexity. The learner spends two to three times as long practicing as he does reading. Based on cognitive research showing that retention increases 400 percent when learners are challenged to retrieve the information they just read. Explanations are in plain, nontechnical English that people of all backgrounds can readily understand. With ample coding examples and illustrations.
The Little Elixir & OTP Guidebook
Benjamin Tan Wei Hao - 2015
It combines the productivity and expressivity of Ruby with the concurrency and fault-tolerance of Erlang. Elixir makes full use of Erlang's powerful OTP library, which many developers consider the source of Erlang's greatness, so you can have mature, professional-quality functionality right out of the gate. Elixir's support for functional programming makes it a great choice for highly distributed event-driven applications like IoT systems.The Little Elixir & OTP Guidebook gets you started programming applications with Elixir and OTP. You begin with a quick overview of the Elixir language syntax, along with just enough functional programming to use it effectively. Then, you'll dive straight into OTP and learn how it helps you build scalable, fault-tolerant and distributed applications through several fun examples. Come rediscover the joy of programming with Elixir and remember how it feels like to be a beginner again.
Swift Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide (Big Nerd Ranch Guides)
Matthew Mathias - 2015
Throughout the book, the authors share their insights into Swift to ensure that you understand the hows and whys of Swift and can put that understanding to use in different contexts. After working through the book, you will have the knowledge and confidence to develop your own solutions to a wide range of programming challenges using Swift.
Common LISP Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach
Edmund Weitz - 2015
This book covers areas as diverse as web programming, databases, graphical user interfaces, integration with other programming languages, multi-threading, and mobile devices as well as debugging techniques and optimization, to name just a few.Written by an author who has used Common Lisp in many successful commercial projects over more than a decade, Common Lisp Recipes is also the first Common Lisp book to tackle such advanced topics as environment access, logical pathnames, Gray streams, delivery of executables, pretty printing, setf expansions, or changing the syntax of Common Lisp.The book is organized around specific problems or questions each followed by ready-to-use example solutions and clear explanations of the concepts involved, plus pointers to alternatives and more information. Each recipe can be read independently of the others and thus the book will earn a special place on your bookshelf as a reference work you always want to have within reach.Common Lisp Recipes is aimed at programmers who are already familiar with Common Lisp to a certain extent but do not yet have the experience you typically only get from years of hacking in a specific computer language. It is written in a style that mixes hands-on no-frills pragmatism with precise information and prudent mentorship.If you feel attracted to Common Lisp's mix of breathtaking features and down-to-earth utilitarianism, you'll also like this book.