The Web is awash in Ruby code that is now virtually impossible to change or extend. This text helps you solve that problem by using powerful real-world object-oriented design techniques, which it thoroughly explains using simple and practical Ruby examples. Sandi Metz has distilled a lifetime of conversations and presentations about object-oriented design into a set of Ruby-focused practices for crafting manageable, extensible, and pleasing code. She shows you how to build new applications that can survive success and repair existing applications that have become impossible to change. Each technique is illustrated with extended examples, all downloadable from the companion Web site, poodr.info. The first title to focus squarely on object-oriented Ruby application design, Practical Object-Oriented Design in Ruby will guide you to superior outcomes, whatever your previous Ruby experience. Novice Ruby programmers will find specific rules to live by; intermediate Ruby programmers will find valuable principles they can flexibly interpret and apply; and advanced Ruby programmers will find a common language they can use to lead development and guide their colleagues. This guide will help you Understand how object-oriented programming can help you craft Ruby code that is easier to maintain and upgrade Decide what belongs in a single Ruby class Avoid entangling objects that should be kept separate Define flexible interfaces among objects Reduce programming overhead costs with duck typing Successfully apply inheritance Build objects via composition Design cost-effective tests Solve common problems associated with poorly designed Ruby code

    High-profile projects such as the Linux Kernel, Mozilla, Gnome, and Ruby on Rails are now using Distributed Version Control Systems (DVCS) instead of the old stand-bys of CVS or Subversion.Git is a modern, fast, DVCS. But understanding how it fits into your development can be a daunting task without an introduction to the new concepts. Whether you're just starting out as a professional programmer or are an old hand, this book will get you started using Git in this new distributed world. Whether you're making the switch from a traditional centralized version control system or are a new programmer just getting started, this book prepares you to start using Git in your everyday programming.Pragmatic Version Control Using Git starts with an overview of version control systems, and shows how being distributed enables you to work more efficiently in our increasingly mobile society. It then progresses through the basics necessary to get started using Git.You'll get a thorough overview of how to take advantage of Git. By the time you finish this book you'll have a firm grounding in how to use Git, both by yourself and as part of a team.Learn how to use how to use Git to protect all the pieces of your project Work collaboratively in a distributed environment Learn how to use Git's cheap branches to streamline your development Install and administer a Git server to share your repository

    Moms in particular will welcome this trend.  A full 60% wish they had a flexible work option. But companies see advantages too in the way remote work increases their talent pool, reduces turnover, lessens their real estate footprint, and improves the ability to conduct business across multiple time zones, to name just a few advantages.  In Remote, inconoclastic authors Fried and Hansson will convince readers that letting all or part of work teams function remotely is a great idea--and they're going to show precisely how a remote work setup can be accomplished.

    As they helped grow Google from a young start-up to a global icon, they relearned everything they knew about management. How Google Works is the sum of those experiences distilled into a fun, easy-to-read primer on corporate culture, strategy, talent, decision-making, communication, innovation, and dealing with disruption.The authors explain how the confluence of three seismic changes - the internet, mobile, and cloud computing - has shifted the balance of power from companies to consumers. The companies that will thrive in this ever-changing landscape will be the ones that create superior products and attract a new breed of multifaceted employees whom the authors dub 'smart creatives'. The management maxims ('Consensus requires dissension', 'Exile knaves but fight for divas', 'Think 10X, not 10%') are illustrated with previously unreported anecdotes from Google's corporate history.'Back in 2010, Eric and I created an internal class for Google managers,' says Rosenberg. 'The class slides all read 'Google confidential' until an employee suggested we uphold the spirit of openness and share them with the world. This book codifies the recipe for our secret sauce: how Google innovates and how it empowers employees to succeed.'

    But it can be even trickier to use than either Unix or Linux, and harder still to master.Absolute FreeBSD, 2nd Edition is your complete guide to FreeBSD, written by FreeBSD committer Michael W. Lucas. Lucas considers this completely revised and rewritten second edition of his landmark work to be his best work ever; a true product of his love for FreeBSD and the support of the FreeBSD community. Absolute FreeBSD, 2nd Edition covers installation, networking, security, network services, system performance, kernel tweaking, filesystems, SMP, upgrading, crash debugging, and much more, including coverage of how to:Use advanced security features like packet filtering, virtual machines, and host-based intrusion detection Build custom live FreeBSD CDs and bootable flash Manage network services and filesystems Use DNS and set up email, IMAP, web, and FTP services for both servers and clients Monitor your system with performance-testing and troubleshooting tools Run diskless systems Manage schedulers, remap shared libraries, and optimize your system for your hardware and your workload Build custom network appliances with embedded FreeBSD Implement redundant disks, even without special hardware Integrate FreeBSD-specific SNMP into your network management system. Whether you're just getting started with FreeBSD or you've been using it for years, you'll find this book to be the definitive guide to FreeBSD that you've been waiting for.

    It’s the latest in a long line of “Are you cool enough to use me?” programming languages, APIs, and toolkits. In that sense, it lands squarely in the tradition of Rails, and Ajax, and Hadoop, and even to some degree iPhone programming and HTML5.Dig a little deeper, and you’ll hear that Node.js (or, as it’s more briefly called by many, simply “Node”) is a server-side solution for JavaScript, and in particular, for receiving and responding to HTTP requests. If that doesn’t completely boggle your mind, by the time the conversation heats up with discussion of ports, sockets, and threads, you’ll tend to glaze over. Is this really JavaScript? In fact, why in the world would anyone want to run JavaScript outside of a browser, let alone the server?The good news is that you’re hearing (and thinking) about the right things. Node really is concerned with network programming and server-side request/response processing. The bad news is that like Rails, Ajax, and Hadoop before it, there’s precious little clear information available. There will be, in time — as there now is for these other “cool” frameworks that have matured — but why wait for a book or tutorial when you might be able to use Node today, and dramatically improve the maintainability.

    And they did it without fanfare or recognition from their employer. Hiltzik's Dealers of Lightning provides a fascinating look at technohistory that sets the record straight. In Dealers of Lightning, Hiltzik describes the forces and faces behind the revolution that the Xerox PARC team single-handedly spawned. The Xerox PARC group was composed solely of top technical minds. The decision was made at Xerox headquarters to give the team complete freedom from deadlines and directives, in hopes of fostering a true creative environment. It worked — perhaps too well. The team responded with a steady output of amazing technology, including the first version of the Internet, the first personal computer, user-friendly word-processing programs, and pop-up menus. Xerox, far from ready for the explosion of innovation, failed to utilize the technology dreamed up by the group. Out of all the dazzling inventions born at Xerox PARC, only a handful were developed and marketed by Xerox. However, one of these inventions, the laser printer, proved successful enough to earn billions for the company, therefore justifying its investment in the research center. Most oftheteam's creations would go on to be developed and perfected by other companies, such as IBM, Apple, and Microsoft. Drawing from interviews with the engineers, executives, and scientists involved in the Xerox PARC, Dealers of Lightning chronicles an amazing era of egos, ideas, and inventions at the dawn of the computer age.

    Outlook 2007 and 2003 are also covered. This seminal guide presents the author's best practices of time, task, and e-mail management, drawing from time management theories and applying these best practices in Microsoft Outlook. Anyone who finds they are overburdened by e-mail or working too late each day will benefit from this book.

    In 1997, she wroteClose to the Machine, the now classic and still definitive account of life as a coder at the birth of what would be a sweeping technological, cultural, and financial revolution.The intervening twenty years has seen, among other things, the rise of the Internet, the ubiquity of once unimaginably powerful computers, and the thorough transformation of our economy and society—as Ullman’s clique of socially awkward West Coast geeks became our new elite, elevated for and insulated by a technical mastery that few could achieve.In Life in Code, Ullman presents a series of essays that unlock and explain—and don’t necessarily celebrate—how we got to now, as only she can, with a fluency and expertise that’s unusual in someone with her humanistic worldview, and with the sharp insight and brilliant prose that are uniquely her own. Life in Code is an essential text toward our understanding of the last twenty years—and the next twenty.

    In Turing’s Cathedral, George Dyson focuses on a small group of men and women, led by John von Neumann at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, who built one of the first computers to realize Alan Turing’s vision of a Universal Machine. Their work would break the distinction between numbers that mean things and numbers that do things—and our universe would never be the same. Using five kilobytes of memory (the amount allocated to displaying the cursor on a computer desktop of today), they achieved unprecedented success in both weather prediction and nuclear weapons design, while tackling, in their spare time, problems ranging from the evolution of viruses to the evolution of stars. Dyson’s account, both historic and prophetic, sheds important new light on how the digital universe exploded in the aftermath of World War II. The proliferation of both codes and machines was paralleled by two historic developments: the decoding of self-replicating sequences in biology and the invention of the hydrogen bomb. It’s no coincidence that the most destructive and the most constructive of human inventions appeared at exactly the same time.  How did code take over the world? In retracing how Alan Turing’s one-dimensional model became John von Neumann’s two-dimensional implementation, Turing’s Cathedral offers a series of provocative suggestions as to where the digital universe, now fully three-dimensional, may be heading next.

    This book describes BEAM✲, an agile approach to dimensional modeling, for improving communication between data warehouse designers, BI stakeholders and the whole DW/BI development team. BEAM✲ provides tools and techniques that will encourage DW/BI designers and developers to move away from their keyboards and entity relationship based tools and model interactively with their colleagues. The result is everyone thinks dimensionally from the outset! Developers understand how to efficiently implement dimensional modeling solutions. Business stakeholders feel ownership of the data warehouse they have created, and can already imagine how they will use it to answer their business questions. Within this book, you will learn: ✲ Agile dimensional modeling using Business Event Analysis & Modeling (BEAM✲) ✲ Modelstorming: data modeling that is quicker, more inclusive, more productive, and frankly more fun! ✲ Telling dimensional data stories using the 7Ws (who, what, when, where, how many, why and how) ✲ Modeling by example not abstraction; using data story themes, not crow's feet, to describe detail ✲ Storyboarding the data warehouse to discover conformed dimensions and plan iterative development ✲ Visual modeling: sketching timelines, charts and grids to model complex process measurement - simply ✲ Agile design documentation: enhancing star schemas with BEAM✲ dimensional shorthand notation ✲ Solving difficult DW/BI performance and usability problems with proven dimensional design patterns Lawrence Corr is a data warehouse designer and educator. As Principal of DecisionOne Consulting, he helps clients to review and simplify their data warehouse designs, and advises vendors on visual data modeling techniques. He regularly teaches agile dimensional modeling courses worldwide and has taught dimensional DW/BI skills to thousands of students. Jim Stagnitto is a data warehouse and master data management architect specializing in the healthcare, financial services, and information service industries. He is the founder of the data warehousing and data mining consulting firm Llumino.

    If you want to leverage OpenGL 2.1's major improvements, you really need the Fourth Edition. It's a comprehensive tutorial, systematic API reference, and massive code library, all in one. You'll start with the fundamental techniques every graphics programmer needs: transformations, lighting, texture mapping, and so forth. Then, building on those basics, you'll move towards newer capabilities, from advanced buffers to vertex shaders. Of course, OpenGL's cross-platform availability remains one of its most compelling features. This book's extensive multiplatform coverage has been thoroughly rewritten, and now addresses everything from Windows Vista to OpenGL ES for handhelds. This is stuff you absolutely want the latest edition for. A small but telling point: This book's recently been invited into Addison-Wesley's OpenGL Series, making it an "official" OpenGL book -- and making a powerful statement about its credibility. Bill Camarda, from the August 2007 href="http://www.barnesandnoble.com/newslet... Only

     Christopher McKinlay has been featured in Wired Magazine for his groundbreaking analysis of OkCupid. For the first time he’s showing non-experts how to turn Internet dating on its head. This concise guide will show anyone (straight, gay, male or female) the procedure McKinlay used to meet his fiancee and how the same ideas can transform their lives and bring them from browsing to contact. One summer evening while logged into a supercomputer in Colorado waiting for a large computation, McKinlay was killing time on OkC when he was troubled by a problem: what if large groups of people responded to OkCupid’s personality questionnaire in statistically similar ways? He created custom software to scrape data from the site, collecting over 6,000,000 answers to OkC’s “match questions” from more than 20,000 real users. This data made clear he’d been using the site the wrong way. Based on his findings, McKinlay (a mathematics PhD), optimized his own profile. The transformation was profound. He went from showing a “match percentage” of 90% with a few hundred women in the L.A. area to showing 90% or higher with over 30,000 local women. Unsolicited messages from attractive strangers began flooding his inbox. With a foreword by Jon Finkel, McKinlay’s insightful how-to will teach you how to benefit from the buried statistical patterns of online romance.