Batman and Psychology: A Dark and Stormy Knight


Travis Langley - 2012
    Why does this superhero without superpowers fascinate us? What does that fascination say about us? Batman and Psychology explores these and other intriguing questions about the masked vigilante, including: Does Batman have PTSD?  Why does he fight crime? Why as a vigilante? Why the mask, the bat, and the underage partner? Why are his most intimate relationships with “bad girls” he ought to lock up? And why won't he kill that homicidal, green-haired clown?Gives you fresh insights into the complex inner world of Batman and Bruce Wayne and the life and characters of Gotham CityExplains psychological theory and concepts through the lens of one of the world’s most popular comic book charactersWritten by a psychology professor and “Superherologist” (scholar of superheroes)

Coders: The Making of a New Tribe and the Remaking of the World


Clive Thompson - 2019
    And this may sound weirdly obvious, but every single one of those pieces of software was written by a programmer. Programmers are thus among the most quietly influential people on the planet. As we live in a world made of software, they're the architects. The decisions they make guide our behavior. When they make something newly easy to do, we do a lot more of it. If they make it hard or impossible to do something, we do less of it.If we want to understand how today's world works, we ought to understand something about coders. Who exactly are the people that are building today's world? What makes them tick? What type of personality is drawn to writing software? And perhaps most interestingly -- what does it do to them?One of the first pieces of coding a newbie learns is the program to make the computer say "Hello, world!" Like that piece of code, Clive Thompson's book is a delightful place to begin to understand this vocation, which is both a profession and a way of life, and which essentially didn't exist little more than a generation ago, but now is considered just about the only safe bet we can make about what the future holds. Thompson takes us close to some of the great coders of our time, and unpacks the surprising history of the field, beginning with the first great coders, who were women. Ironically, if we're going to traffic in stereotypes, women are arguably "naturally" better at coding than men, but they were written out of the history, and shoved out of the seats, for reasons that are illuminating. Now programming is indeed, if not a pure brotopia, at least an awfully homogenous community, which attracts people from a very narrow band of backgrounds and personality types. As Thompson learns, the consequences of that are significant - not least being a fetish for disruption at scale that doesn't leave much time for pondering larger moral issues of collateral damage. At the same time, coding is a marvelous new art form that has improved the world in innumerable ways, and Thompson reckons deeply, as no one before him has, with what great coding in fact looks like, who creates it, and where they come from. To get as close to his subject has he can, he picks up the thread of his own long-abandoned coding practice, and tries his mightiest to up his game, with some surprising results.More and more, any serious engagement with the world demands an engagement with code and its consequences, and to understand code, we must understand coders. In that regard, Clive Thompson's Hello, World! is a marvelous and delightful master class.

The Quick Python Book


Naomi R. Ceder - 2000
    This updated edition includes all the changes in Python 3, itself a significant shift from earlier versions of Python.The book begins with basic but useful programs that teach the core features of syntax, control flow, and data structures. It then moves to larger applications involving code management, object-oriented programming, web development, and converting code from earlier versions of Python.True to his audience of experienced developers, the author covers common programming language features concisely, while giving more detail to those features unique to Python.Purchase of the print book comes with an offer of a free PDF, ePub, and Kindle eBook from Manning. Also available is all code from the book.

Raspberry Pi Cookbook


Simon Monk - 2013
    In this cookbook, prolific hacker and author Simon Monk provides more than 200 practical recipes for running this tiny low-cost computer with Linux, programming it with Python, and hooking up sensors, motors, and other hardware—including Arduino.You’ll also learn basic principles to help you use new technologies with Raspberry Pi as its ecosystem develops. Python and other code examples from the book are available on GitHub. This cookbook is ideal for programmers and hobbyists familiar with the Pi through resources such as Getting Started with Raspberry Pi (O’Reilly).Set up and manage your Raspberry PiConnect the Pi to a networkWork with its Linux-based operating systemUse the Pi’s ready-made softwareProgram Raspberry Pi with PythonControl hardware through the GPIO connectorUse Raspberry Pi to run different types of motorsWork with switches, keypads, and other digital inputsHook up sensors for taking various measurementsAttach different displays, such as an LED matrixCreate dynamic projects with Raspberry Pi and Arduino Make sure to check out 10 of the over 60 video recipes for this book at: http://razzpisampler.oreilly.com/ You can purchase all recipes at:

Windows PowerShell Cookbook: The Complete Guide to Scripting Microsoft's Command Shell


Lee Holmes - 2007
    Intermediate to advanced system administrators will find more than 100 tried-and-tested scripts they can copy and use immediately.Updated for PowerShell 3.0, this comprehensive cookbook includes hands-on recipes for common tasks and administrative jobs that you can apply whether you’re on the client or server version of Windows. You also get quick references to technologies used in conjunction with PowerShell, including format specifiers and frequently referenced registry keys to selected .NET, COM, and WMI classes.Learn how to use PowerShell on Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012Tour PowerShell’s core features, including the command model, object-based pipeline, and ubiquitous scriptingMaster fundamentals such as the interactive shell, pipeline, and object conceptsPerform common tasks that involve working with files, Internet-connected scripts, user interaction, and moreSolve tasks in systems and enterprise management, such as working with Active Directory and the filesystem

Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers


Timothy Ferriss - 2016
     From the author:   “For the last two years, I’ve interviewed more than 200 world-class performers for my podcast, The Tim Ferriss Show. The guests range from super celebs (Jamie Foxx, Arnold Schwarzenegger, etc.) and athletes (icons of powerlifting, gymnastics, surfing, etc.) to legendary Special Operations commanders and black-market biochemists. For most of my guests, it’s the first time they’ve agreed to a two-to-three-hour interview. This unusual depth has helped make The Tim Ferriss Show the first business/interview podcast to pass 100 million downloads.   “This book contains the distilled tools, tactics, and ‘inside baseball’ you won’t find anywhere else. It also includes new tips from past guests, and life lessons from new ‘guests’ you haven’t met.   “What makes the show different is a relentless focus on actionable details. This is reflected in the questions. For example: What do these people do in the first sixty minutes of each morning? What do their workout routines look like, and why? What books have they gifted most to other people? What are the biggest wastes of time for novices in their field? What supplements do they take on a daily basis?   “I don’t view myself as an interviewer. I view myself as an experimenter. If I can’t test something and replicate results in the messy reality of everyday life, I’m not interested.   “Everything within these pages has been vetted, explored, and applied to my own life in some fashion. I’ve used dozens of the tactics and philosophies in high-stakes negotiations, high-risk environments, or large business dealings. The lessons have made me millions of dollars and saved me years of wasted effort and frustration.   “I created this book, my ultimate notebook of high-leverage tools, for myself. It’s changed my life, and I hope the same for you.”

Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future


Martin Ford - 2015
    In Rise of the Robots, Silicon Valley entrepreneur Martin Ford argues that this is absolutely not the case. As technology continues to accelerate and machines begin taking care of themselves, fewer people will be necessary. Artificial intelligence is already well on its way to making “good jobs” obsolete: many paralegals, journalists, office workers, and even computer programmers are poised to be replaced by robots and smart software. As progress continues, blue and white collar jobs alike will evaporate, squeezing working- and middle-class families ever further. At the same time, households are under assault from exploding costs, especially from the two major industries—education and health care—that, so far, have not been transformed by information technology. The result could well be massive unemployment and inequality as well as the implosion of the consumer economy itself.In Rise of the Robots, Ford details what machine intelligence and robotics can accomplish, and implores employers, scholars, and policy makers alike to face the implications. The past solutions to technological disruption, especially more training and education, aren't going to work, and we must decide, now, whether the future will see broad-based prosperity or catastrophic levels of inequality and economic insecurity. Rise of the Robots is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand what accelerating technology means for their own economic prospects—not to mention those of their children—as well as for society as a whole.

Dawn of the New Everything: Encounters with Reality and Virtual Reality


Jaron Lanier - 2017
    An inventive blend of autobiography, science writing, philosophy, and advice, this book tells the wild story of his personal and professional life as a scientist, from his childhood in the UFO territory of New Mexico, to the loss of his mother, the founding of the first start-up, and finally becoming a world-renowned technological guru. Understanding virtual reality as being both a scientific and cultural adventure, Lanier demonstrates it to be a humanistic setting for technology. While his previous books offered a more critical view of social media and other manifestations of technology, in this book he argues that virtual reality can actually make our lives richer and fuller. Dawn of the New Everything is ultimately a look at what it means to be human at a moment of unprecedented technological possibility, giving readers a new perspective on how the brain and body connect to the world.

The Design of Everyday Things


Donald A. Norman - 1988
    It could forever change how you experience and interact with your physical surroundings, open your eyes to the perversity of bad design and the desirability of good design, and raise your expectations about how things should be designed.B & W photographs and illustrations throughout.

Coders at Work: Reflections on the Craft of Programming


Peter Seibel - 2009
    As the words "at work" suggest, Peter Seibel focuses on how his interviewees tackle the day–to–day work of programming, while revealing much more, like how they became great programmers, how they recognize programming talent in others, and what kinds of problems they find most interesting. Hundreds of people have suggested names of programmers to interview on the Coders at Work web site: http://www.codersatwork.com. The complete list was 284 names. Having digested everyone’s feedback, we selected 16 folks who’ve been kind enough to agree to be interviewed:- Frances Allen: Pioneer in optimizing compilers, first woman to win the Turing Award (2006) and first female IBM fellow- Joe Armstrong: Inventor of Erlang- Joshua Bloch: Author of the Java collections framework, now at Google- Bernie Cosell: One of the main software guys behind the original ARPANET IMPs and a master debugger- Douglas Crockford: JSON founder, JavaScript architect at Yahoo!- L. Peter Deutsch: Author of Ghostscript, implementer of Smalltalk-80 at Xerox PARC and Lisp 1.5 on PDP-1- Brendan Eich: Inventor of JavaScript, CTO of the Mozilla Corporation - Brad Fitzpatrick: Writer of LiveJournal, OpenID, memcached, and Perlbal - Dan Ingalls: Smalltalk implementor and designer- Simon Peyton Jones: Coinventor of Haskell and lead designer of Glasgow Haskell Compiler- Donald Knuth: Author of The Art of Computer Programming and creator of TeX- Peter Norvig: Director of Research at Google and author of the standard text on AI- Guy Steele: Coinventor of Scheme and part of the Common Lisp Gang of Five, currently working on Fortress- Ken Thompson: Inventor of UNIX- Jamie Zawinski: Author of XEmacs and early Netscape/Mozilla hackerWhat you’ll learn:How the best programmers in the world do their jobWho is this book for?Programmers interested in the point of view of leaders in the field. Programmers looking for approaches that work for some of these outstanding programmers.

Learning From Data: A Short Course


Yaser S. Abu-Mostafa - 2012
    Its techniques are widely applied in engineering, science, finance, and commerce. This book is designed for a short course on machine learning. It is a short course, not a hurried course. From over a decade of teaching this material, we have distilled what we believe to be the core topics that every student of the subject should know. We chose the title `learning from data' that faithfully describes what the subject is about, and made it a point to cover the topics in a story-like fashion. Our hope is that the reader can learn all the fundamentals of the subject by reading the book cover to cover. ---- Learning from data has distinct theoretical and practical tracks. In this book, we balance the theoretical and the practical, the mathematical and the heuristic. Our criterion for inclusion is relevance. Theory that establishes the conceptual framework for learning is included, and so are heuristics that impact the performance of real learning systems. ---- Learning from data is a very dynamic field. Some of the hot techniques and theories at times become just fads, and others gain traction and become part of the field. What we have emphasized in this book are the necessary fundamentals that give any student of learning from data a solid foundation, and enable him or her to venture out and explore further techniques and theories, or perhaps to contribute their own. ---- The authors are professors at California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), and National Taiwan University (NTU), where this book is the main text for their popular courses on machine learning. The authors also consult extensively with financial and commercial companies on machine learning applications, and have led winning teams in machine learning competitions.

R for Data Science: Import, Tidy, Transform, Visualize, and Model Data


Hadley Wickham - 2016
    This book introduces you to R, RStudio, and the tidyverse, a collection of R packages designed to work together to make data science fast, fluent, and fun. Suitable for readers with no previous programming experience, R for Data Science is designed to get you doing data science as quickly as possible. Authors Hadley Wickham and Garrett Grolemund guide you through the steps of importing, wrangling, exploring, and modeling your data and communicating the results. You’ll get a complete, big-picture understanding of the data science cycle, along with basic tools you need to manage the details. Each section of the book is paired with exercises to help you practice what you’ve learned along the way. You’ll learn how to: Wrangle—transform your datasets into a form convenient for analysis Program—learn powerful R tools for solving data problems with greater clarity and ease Explore—examine your data, generate hypotheses, and quickly test them Model—provide a low-dimensional summary that captures true "signals" in your dataset Communicate—learn R Markdown for integrating prose, code, and results

Nikola Tesla: Imagination and the Man That Invented the 20th Century


Sean Patrick - 2013
    It’s no coincidence that geniuses not only dare to dream of the impossible for their work, but do the same for their lives. They’re audacious enough to think that they’re not just ordinary players. Few stories better illustrate this better than the life of the father of the modern world, a man of legendary imaginative power and wonder: Nikola Tesla.In this book, you’ll be taken on a whirlwind journey through Tesla’s life and work, and not only learn about the successes and mistakes of one of history’s greatest inventors, but also how to look at the world in a different, more imaginative way.Read this book now and learn lessons from Nikola Tesla on why imagination is so vital to awakening your inner genius, and insights into the real “secret” to creativity, as explained by people like Jobs, Picasso, Dali, and Twain.

Visual Explanations


Edward R. Tufte - 1997
    Through computers, the Internet, the media, and even our daily newspapers, we are awash in a seemingly endless stream of charts, maps, infographics, diagrams, and data. Visual Explanations is a navigational guide through this turbulent sea of information. The book is an essential reference for anyone involved in graphic, web, or multimedia design, as well as for educators and lecturers who use graphics in presentations or classes.Jacket design: Dmitry Krasny.Other artwork by Bonnie Scranton, Dmitry Krasny, and Weilin Wu.

The Psychology of Computer Programming


Gerald M. Weinberg - 1971
    Weinberg adds new insights and highlights the similarities and differences between now and then. Using a conversational style that invites the reader to join him, Weinberg reunites with some of his most insightful writings on the human side of software engineering.Topics include egoless programming, intelligence, psychological measurement, personality factors, motivation, training, social problems on large projects, problem-solving ability, programming language design, team formation, the programming environment, and much more.Dorset House Publishing is proud to make this important text available to new generations of programmers -- and to encourage readers of the first edition to return to its valuable lessons.