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.

    It teaches Clojure from the basics to advanced topics using practical, real-world application examples. Blow through the theory and dive into practical matters like unit-testing and environment set-up, all the way through building a scalable web-application using domain-specific languages, Hadoop, HBase, and RabbitMQ. About the TechnologyClojure is a modern Lisp for the JVM, and it has the strengths you'd expect: first-class functions, macros, support for functional programming, and a Lisp-like, clean programming style. About this BookClojure in Action is a practical guide focused on applying Clojure to practical programming challenges. You'll start with a language tutorial written for readers who already know OOP. Then, you'll dive into the use cases where Clojure really shines: state management, safe concurrency and multicore programming, first-class code generation, and Java interop. In each chapter, you'll first explore the unique characteristics of a problem area and then discover how to tackle them using Clojure. Along the way, you'll explore practical matters like architecture, unit testing, and set-up as you build a scalable web application that includes custom DSLs, Hadoop, HBase, and RabbitMQ. What's InsideA fast-paced Clojure tutorial Creating web services with Clojure Scaling through messaging Creating DSLs with Clojure's macro system Test-driven development with Clojure Distributed programming with Clojure, and moreThis book assumes you're familiar with an OO language like Java, C#, or C++ but requires no background in Lisp or Clojure itself.================================== Table of ContentsPART 1 GETTING STARTED Introduction to Clojure A whirlwind tour Building blocks of Clojure Polymorphism with multimethods Clojure and Java interop State and the concurrent world Evolving Clojure through macros PART 2 GETTING REAL Test-driven development and more Data storage with Clojure Clojure and the web Scaling through messaging Data processing with Clojure More on functional programming Protocols, records, and type More macros and DSLs

    The authors' enthusiasm for their subject is compelling as they present abstract concepts in a humorous and easy-to-grasp fashion. Together, these books will open new doors of thought to anyone who wants to find out what computing is really about. The Little Schemer introduces computing as an extension of arithmetic and algebra; things that everyone studies in grade school and high school. It introduces programs as recursive functions and briefly discusses the limits of what computers can do. The authors use the programming language Scheme, and interesting foods to illustrate these abstract ideas. The Seasoned Schemer informs the reader about additional dimensions of computing: functions as values, change of state, and exceptional cases. The Little LISPer has been a popular introduction to LISP for many years. It had appeared in French and Japanese. The Little Schemer and The Seasoned Schemer are worthy successors and will prove equally popular as textbooks for Scheme courses as well as companion texts for any complete introductory course in Computer Science.

    You can now easily extend the framework, change its behavior, and replace whole components to bend it to your will, all without messy hacks. This pioneering book is the first resource that deep dives into the new Rails 3 APIs and shows you how use them to write better web applications and make your day-to-day work with Rails more productive. Rails Core developer Jose Valim guides you through seven different tutorials, each of them using test-driven development to build a new Rails extension or application that solves common problems with these new APIs. You will understand how the Rails rendering stack works and customize it to read templates from the database while you learn how to mimic Active Record behavior, like validations, in any other object. You will find out how to write faster, leaner controllers, and you'll learn how to mix Sinatra applications into your Rails apps, so you can choose the most appropriate tool for the job. In addition, you will improve your productivity by customizing generators and responders. This book will help you understand Rails 3's inner workings, including generators, template handlers, internationalization, routing, and responders. With the knowledge you'll gain, you'll be ready to tackle complicated projects more easily than ever before, creating solutions that are well-tested, modular, and easy to maintain.

    He needed a way to keep track of software development over time – whatever he was thinking about or working on. He researched subjects he found interesting, then documented his research with a public blog post, which he could easily find and refer to later. Over time, increasing numbers of blog visitors found the posts helpful, relevant and interesting. Now, approximately 100,000 readers visit the blog per day and nearly as many comment and interact on the site.Effective Programming: More Than Writing Code is your one-stop shop for all things programming. Jeff writes with humor and understanding, allowing for both seasoned programmers and newbies to appreciate the depth of his research. From such posts as“The Programmer’s Bill of Rights” and “Why Cant Programmers... Program?” to “Working With the Chaos Monkey,” this book introduces the importance of writing responsible code, the logistics involved, and how people should view it more as a lifestyle than a career.

    Because the computer gathers knowledge from experience, there is no need for a human computer operator to formally specify all the knowledge that the computer needs. The hierarchy of concepts allows the computer to learn complicated concepts by building them out of simpler ones; a graph of these hierarchies would be many layers deep. This book introduces a broad range of topics in deep learning.The text offers mathematical and conceptual background, covering relevant concepts in linear algebra, probability theory and information theory, numerical computation, and machine learning. It describes deep learning techniques used by practitioners in industry, including deep feedforward networks, regularization, optimization algorithms, convolutional networks, sequence modeling, and practical methodology; and it surveys such applications as natural language processing, speech recognition, computer vision, online recommendation systems, bioinformatics, and videogames. Finally, the book offers research perspectives, covering such theoretical topics as linear factor models, autoencoders, representation learning, structured probabilistic models, Monte Carlo methods, the partition function, approximate inference, and deep generative models.Deep Learning can be used by undergraduate or graduate students planning careers in either industry or research, and by software engineers who want to begin using deep learning in their products or platforms. A website offers supplementary material for both readers and instructors.

    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

    In this unique collection, you'll learn about the processes that led to specific design decisions, including the goals they had in mind, the trade-offs they had to make, and how their experiences have left an impact on programming today. Masterminds of Programming includes individual interviews with:Adin D. Falkoff: APL Thomas E. Kurtz: BASIC Charles H. Moore: FORTH Robin Milner: ML Donald D. Chamberlin: SQL Alfred Aho, Peter Weinberger, and Brian Kernighan: AWK Charles Geschke and John Warnock: PostScript Bjarne Stroustrup: C++ Bertrand Meyer: Eiffel Brad Cox and Tom Love: Objective-C Larry Wall: Perl Simon Peyton Jones, Paul Hudak, Philip Wadler, and John Hughes: Haskell Guido van Rossum: Python Luiz Henrique de Figueiredo and Roberto Ierusalimschy: Lua James Gosling: Java Grady Booch, Ivar Jacobson, and James Rumbaugh: UML Anders Hejlsberg: Delphi inventor and lead developer of C# If you're interested in the people whose vision and hard work helped shape the computer industry, you'll find Masterminds of Programming fascinating.

    An effective testing strategy will deliver new functionality more aggressively, accelerate user feedback, and improve quality. However, for many developers, creating effective automated tests is a unique and unfamiliar challenge. xUnit Test Patterns is the definitive guide to writing automated tests using xUnit, the most popular unit testing framework in use today. Agile coach and test automation expert Gerard Meszaros describes 68 proven patterns for making tests easier to write, understand, and maintain. He then shows you how to make them more robust and repeatable--and far more cost-effective. Loaded with information, this book feels like three books in one. The first part is a detailed tutorial on test automation that covers everything from test strategy to in-depth test coding. The second part, a catalog of 18 frequently encountered "test smells," provides trouble-shooting guidelines to help you determine the root cause of problems and the most applicable patterns. The third part contains detailed descriptions of each pattern, including refactoring instructions illustrated by extensive code samples in multiple programming languages. Topics covered includeWriting better tests--and writing them faster The four phases of automated tests: fixture setup, exercising the system under test, result verification, and fixture teardown Improving test coverage by isolating software from its environment using Test Stubs and Mock Objects Designing software for greater testability Using test "smells" (including code smells, behavior smells, and project smells) to spot problems and know when and how to eliminate them Refactoring tests for greater simplicity, robustness, and execution speed This book will benefit developers, managers, and testers working with any agile or conventional development process, whether doing test-driven development or writing the tests last. While the patterns and smells are especially applicable to all members of the xUnit family, they also apply to next-generation behavior-driven development frameworks such as RSpec and JBehave and to other kinds of test automation tools, including recorded test tools and data-driven test tools such as Fit and FitNesse.Visual Summary of the Pattern Language Foreword Preface Acknowledgments Introduction Refactoring a Test PART I: The Narratives Chapter 1 A Brief Tour Chapter 2 Test Smells Chapter 3 Goals of Test Automation Chapter 4 Philosophy of Test Automation Chapter 5 Principles of Test Automation Chapter 6 Test Automation Strategy Chapter 7 xUnit Basics Chapter 8 Transient Fixture Management Chapter 9 Persistent Fixture Management Chapter 10 Result Verification Chapter 11 Using Test Doubles Chapter 12 Organizing Our Tests Chapter 13 Testing with Databases Chapter 14 A Roadmap to Effective Test Automation PART II: The Test Smells Chapter 15 Code Smells Chapter 16 Behavior Smells Chapter 17 Project Smells PART III: The Patterns Chapter 18 Test Strategy Patterns Chapter 19 xUnit Basics Patterns Chapter 20 Fixture Setup Patterns Chapter 21 Result Verification Patterns Chapter 22 Fixture Teardown Patterns Chapter 23 Test Double Patterns Chapter 24 Test Organization Patterns Chapter 25 Database Patterns Chapter 26 Design-for-Testability Patterns Chapter 27 Value Patterns PART IV: Appendixes Appendix A Test Refactorings Appendix B xUnit Terminology Appendix C xUnit Family Members Appendix D Tools Appendix E Goals and Principles Appendix F Smells, Aliases, and Causes Appendix G Patterns, Aliases, and Variations Glossary References Index "

    Whether you're new to Linux or need a reliable update and reference, this is an excellent resource. Veteran bestselling author Christopher Negus provides a complete tutorial packed with major updates, revisions, and hands-on exercises so that you can confidently start using Linux today. Offers a complete restructure, complete with exercises, to make the book a better learning tool Places a strong focus on the Linux command line tools and can be used with all distributions and versions of Linux Features in-depth coverage of the tools that a power user and a Linux administrator need to get startedThis practical learning tool is ideal for anyone eager to set up a new Linux desktop system at home or curious to learn how to manage Linux server systems at work.

    A LISP "toolkit" in each chapter explains how to use Common LISP programming and debugging tools such as DESCRIBE, INSPECT, TRACE and STEP.

    With this book, you'll discover why Scala is ideal for highly scalable, component-based applications that support concurrency and distribution.Programming Scala clearly explains the advantages of Scala as a JVM language. You'll learn how to leverage the wealth of Java class libraries to meet the practical needs of enterprise and Internet projects more easily. Packed with code examples, this book provides useful information on Scala's command-line tools, third-party tools, libraries, and available language-aware plugins for editors and IDEs.Learn how Scala's succinct and flexible code helps you program fasterDiscover the notable improvements Scala offers over Java's object modelGet a concise overview of functional programming, and learn how Scala's support for it offers a better approach to concurrencyKnow how to use mixin composition with traits, pattern matching, concurrency with Actors, and other essential featuresTake advantage of Scala's built-in support for XMLLearn how to develop domain-specific languagesUnderstand the basics for designing test-driven Scala applications

    It starts by explaining how message queuing works, its history, and how RabbitMQ fits in. Then it shows you real-world examples you can apply to your own scalability and interoperability challenges.About the TechnologyThere's a virtual switchboard at the core of most large applications where messages race between servers, programs, and services. RabbitMQ is an efficient and easy-to-deploy queue that handles this message traffic effortlessly in all situations, from web startups to massive enterprise systems.About the BookRabbitMQ in Action teaches you to build and manage scalable applications in multiple languages using the RabbitMQ messaging server. It's a snap to get started. You'll learn how message queuing works and how RabbitMQ fits in. Then, you'll explore practical scalability and interoperability issues through many examples. By the end, you'll know how to make Rabbit run like a well-oiled machine in a 24 x 7 x 365 environment.Written for developers familiar with Python, PHP, Java, .NET, or any other modern programming language. No RabbitMQ experience required. 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. What's InsideLearn fundamental messaging design patternsUse patterns for on-demand scalabilityGlue a PHP frontend to a backend written in anythingImplement a PubSub-alerting service in 30 minutes flatConfigure RabbitMQ's built-in clusteringMonitor, manage, extend, and tune RabbitMQ========================================​====Table of ContentsPulling RabbitMQ out of the hatUnderstanding messagingRunning and administering RabbitSolving problems with Rabbit: coding and patternsClustering and dealing with failureWriting code that survives failureWarrens and Shovels: failover and replicationAdministering RabbitMQ from the WebControlling Rabbit with the REST APIMonitoring: Houston, we have a problemSupercharging and securing your RabbitSmart Rabbits: extending RabbitMQ

    I'm going to share that mindset with you — along with hundreds of actionable techniques and proven habits — so you can shortcut those years.Introducing The Effective Engineer — the only book designed specifically for today's software engineers, based on extensive interviews with engineering leaders at top tech companies, and packed with hundreds of techniques to accelerate your career.For two years, I embarked on a quest seeking an answer to one question:How do the most effective engineers make their efforts, their teams, and their careers more successful?I interviewed and collected stories from engineering VPs, directors, managers, and other leaders at today's top software companies: established, household names like Google, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn; rapidly growing mid-sized companies like Dropbox, Square, Box, Airbnb, and Etsy; and startups like Reddit, Stripe, Instagram, and Lyft.These leaders shared stories about the most valuable insights they've learned and the most common and costly mistakes that they've seen engineers — sometimes themselves — make.This is just a small sampling of the hard questions I posed to them:- What engineering qualities correlate with future success?- What have you done that has paid off the highest returns?- What separates the most effective engineers you've worked with from everyone else?- What's the most valuable lesson your team has learned in the past year?- What advice do you give to new engineers on your team? Everyone's story is different, but many of the lessons share common themes.You'll get to hear stories like:- How did Instagram's team of 5 engineers build and support a service that grew to over 40 million users by the time the company was acquired?- How and why did Quora deploy code to production 40 to 50 times per day?- How did the team behind Google Docs become the fastest acquisition to rewrite its software to run on Google's infrastructure?- How does Etsy use continuous experimentation to design features that are guaranteed to increase revenue at launch?- How did Facebook's small infrastructure team effectively operate thousands of database servers?- How did Dropbox go from barely hiring any new engineers to nearly tripling its team size year-over-year? What's more, I've distilled their stories into actionable habits and lessons that you can follow step-by-step to make your career and your team more successful.The skills used by effective engineers are all learnable.And I'll teach them to you. With The Effective Engineer, I'll teach you a unifying framework called leverage — the value produced per unit of time invested — that you can use to identify the activities that produce disproportionate results.Here's a sneak peek at some of the lessons you'll learn. You'll learn how to:- Prioritize the right projects and tasks to increase your impact.- Earn more leeway from your peers and managers on your projects.- Spend less time maintaining and fixing software and more time building and shipping new features.- Produce more accurate software estimates.- Validate your ideas cheaply to reduce wasted work.- Navigate organizational and people-related bottlenecks.- Find the appropriate level of code reviews, testing, abstraction, and technical debt to balance speed and quality.- Shorten your debugging workflow to increase your iteration speed.

    Written by an expert who's taught this mobile platform to hundreds of developers in large organizations, this gentle introduction shows experienced object-oriented programmers how to use Android’s basic building blocks to create user interfaces, store data, connect to the network, and more.You'll build a Twitter-like application throughout the course of this book, adding new features with each chapter. Along the way, you'll also create your own toolbox of code patterns to help you program any type of Android application with ease.Get an overview of the Android platform and discover how it fits into the mobile ecosystemLearn about the Android stack, including its application framework, and the structure and distribution of application packages (APK)Set up your Android development environment and get started with simple programsUse Android’s building blocks—Activities, Intents, Services, Content Providers, and Broadcast ReceiversLearn how to build basic Android user interfaces and organize UI elements in Views and LayoutsBuild a service that uses a background process to update data in your applicationGet an introduction to Android Interface Definition Language (AIDL) and the Native Development Kit (NDK)