With its simple commands, flags, and parameters, a well-formed command-line application is the quickest way to automate a backup, a build, or a deployment and simplify your life. As Ruby pro David Copeland explains, writing a command-line application that is self-documenting, robust, adaptable and forever useful is easier than you might think. Ruby is particularly suited to this task, since it combines high-level abstractions with "close to the metal" system interaction wrapped up in a concise, readable syntax. Moreover, Ruby has the support of a rich ecosystem of open-source tools and libraries. Ten insightful chapters each explain and demonstrate a command-line best practice. You'll see how to use these tools to elevate the lowliest automation script to a maintainable, polished application. You'll learn how to use free, open source parsers to create user-friendly command-line interfaces as well as command suites. You'll see how to use defaults to keep options simple for everyday users, while giving advanced users options for more complex tasks. There's no reason a command-line application should lack documentation, whether it's part of a help command or a man page; you'll find out when and how to use both. Your journey from command-line novice to pro ends with a look at valuable approaches to testing your apps, and includes some fun techniques for outside-the-box, colorful interfaces that will delight your users. With Ruby, the command line is not dead. Long live the command line.What You Need: All you'll need is Ruby, and the ability to install a few gems along the way. Examples written for Ruby 1.9.2, but 1.8.7 should work just as well.

    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.

    A golden opportunity. A nightmare he can’t escape.If Arthur Mallory plays one more steaming pile of garbage disguised as a virtual role-playing game, he might hang up his gaming hat for good. When he discovers the new “deep dive” game Worlds Unbound, he decides it might be worth a try. If it sucks, he'll just return it the next day and cancel the financing.The game is everything he could have wanted, even without elves or dwarves or character creation. The magic system has him hooked.He’s willing to overlook the mangled sleep schedule and crippling nightmares if it means feeling that power running through his veins. But when an accident leaves his headset broken, he realizes he might be cut off from the magic – and the game – for good.He’s not going to let that happen.

    Unlike our cousins who subsist on raw food, spend their days and nights outdoors, and wear a thick coat of hair, humans are entirely dependent on artificial things, such as clothing, shelter, and the use of tools, and would die in nature without them. Yet, despite our status as the weakest ape, we are the masters of this planet. Given these inherent deficits, how did humans come out on top?In this fascinating new account of our origins, leading archaeologist Timothy Taylor proposes a new way of thinking about human evolution through our relationship with objects. Drawing on the latest fossil evidence, Taylor argues that at each step of our species' development, humans made choices that caused us to assume greater control of our evolution. Our appropriation of objects allowed us to walk upright, lose our body hair, and grow significantly larger brains. As we push the frontiers of scientific technology, creating prosthetics, intelligent implants, and artificially modified genes, we continue a process that started in the prehistoric past, when we first began to extend our powers through objects.Weaving together lively discussions of major discoveries of human skeletons and artifacts with a reexamination of Darwin's theory of evolution, Taylor takes us on an exciting and challenging journey that begins to answer the fundamental question about our existence: what makes humans unique, and what does that mean for our future?

    This book covers relevant geometric principles and how to represent objects algebraically so they can be computed and applied. Recent major developments in the theory and practice of scene reconstruction are described in detail in a unified framework. Richard Hartley and Andrew Zisserman provide comprehensive background material and explain how to apply the methods and implement the algorithms. First Edition HB (2000): 0-521-62304-9

    

    This hands-on guide provides invaluable insight for creating successful test-driven development processes. With source code and examples featured in both C# and .NET, the book walks you through the TDD methodology and shows how it is applied to a real-world application. You'll witness the application built from scratch and details each step that is involved in the development, as well as any problems that were encountered and the solutions that were applied.Clarifies the motivation behind test-driven development (TDD), what it is, and how it works Reviews the various steps involved in developing an application and the testing that is involved prior to implementing the functionality Discusses unit testing and refactoring Professional Test-Driven Development with C# shows you how to create great TDD processes right away.

    For more than a decade, well-known consultant and business professor Wayne Winston has been teaching corporate clients and MBA students the most effective ways to use Microsoft Excel for data analysis, modeling, and decision making. Now this award-winning educator shares the best of his classroom experience in this practical, business-focused guide. Each chapter advances your data analysis and modeling expertise using real-world examples and learn-by-doing exercises. You also get all the book’s problem-and-solution files on CD—for all the practice you need to solve complex problems and work smarter with Excel.Learn how to solve real business problems with Excel!Create best, worst, and most-likely scenarios for sales Calculate how long it would take to recoup a project’s startup costs Plan personal finances, such as computing loan terms or saving for retirement Estimate a product’s demand curve Simulate stock performance over a year Determine which product mix will yield the greatest profits Interpret the effects of price and advertising on sales Assign a dollar value to customer loyalty Manage inventory and order quantities with precision Create customer service queues with short wait times Estimate the probabilities of equipment failure Model business uncertainties Get new perspectives on data with PivotTable dynamic views Help predict quarterly revenue, outcomes of sporting events, presidential elections, and more! On the CD:Practice files for all the book’s exercises Solutions for problem sets Fully searchable eBook A Note Regarding the CD or DVDThe print version of this book ships with a CD or DVD. For those customers purchasing one of the digital formats in which this book is available, we are pleased to offer the CD/DVD content as a free download via O'Reilly Media's Digital Distribution services. To download this content, please visit O'Reilly's web site, search for the title of this book to find its catalog page, and click on the link below the cover image (Examples, Companion Content, or Practice Files). Note that while we provide as much of the media content as we are able via free download, we are sometimes limited by licensing restrictions. Please direct any questions or concerns to booktech@oreilly.com.

     I am an independent mobile app entrepreneur just like you, and I wrote this book to teach you all my strategies for how to: - Get 1,000,000+ downloads from mobile app store marketing - Save money by doing your own ASO (search engine optimization SEO for Android and the Apple App stores) better than most consultants you might consider hiring - Create an app marketing strategy outside the app stores by getting press coverage and learning how to promote an app using social media and social sharing - Make money with effective app store monetization to help you maximize your app revenue with subscriptions, in-app purchases, publishing effective ads, selling affiliate products and other strategies used by successful mobile app businesses - Create a successful mobile app business I wrote this book with all my heart and soul. The book draws on my own years of experience building top apps in my niche, promoting apps, making money with my apps, and coaching other app entrepreneurs on how they can make turn their mobile apps into successful businesses. You will be getting the best of all worlds. First, I have very deep hands on experience building and growing my own apps. Second, I have a wealth of experience coaching and observing other app entrepreneurs whose experiences and aspirations are probably very similar to yours. In this book you get all the insights from me making my own apps a success, and the insights of the cumulative experiences of the people I've coached. This is a very to the point book with many actionable tips and strategies for how to promote your mobile app (iPhone or Android), make money from your smartphone applications, and generally treat it as a real business. All suggestions in this book are based on my own experiences promoting my own problemio.com business apps which at the point of latest revision of this book have cumulative 1,000,000+ downloads, and insights of me having coached over 100 other app entrepreneurs. I am an independent mobile application developer and mobile application entrepreneur just like you. I am not a multi-million dollar app development studio or a big company. If you are an independent app developer just like me, you can use the mobile application marketing strategies that I outline in this book. Many of the strategies are simple and effective, and you can begin working on them as early as today. The book contains over 20 strategies to promote your apps. They all worked for my apps and they will help you grow your app to its highest potential. After growing your app, you will be able to make good money from your app, and achieve the goals that you have for your app business. Get the book now, and become a pro at app store marketing (app store SEO which is otherwise known as ASO), and start increasing your app downloads and revenue today!

    You'll read about humans who are invisible to computers, how a default password once caused a zombie apocalypse and why airlines sometimes give away free tickets. This is also a book on how to prevent, avoid and reduce the impact of such problems. Our lives are increasingly tracked, monitored and categorised by software, driving a flood of information into the vast sea of big data. In this brave new world, humans can't cope with information overload. Governments and companies alike rely on computers to automatically detect fraud, predict behaviour and enforce laws. Inflexible automatons, barely smarter than a fridge, now make life-changing decisions. Clever marketing tricks us into believing that phones, TV sets and even cars are somehow smart. Yet all those computer systems were created by people - people who are well-meaning but fallible and biased, clever but forgetful, and who have grand plans but are pressed for time. Digitising a piece of work doesn't mean there will be no mistakes, but instead guarantees that when mistakes happen, they'll run at a massive scale. The next time you bang your head against a digital wall, the stories in this book will help you understand better what's going on and show you where to look for problems. If nothing else, when it seems as if you're under a black-magic spell, these stories will at least allow you to see the lighter side of the binary chaos. For people involved in software delivery, this book will help you find more empathy for people suffering from our mistakes, and discover heuristics to use during analysis, development or testing to make your software less error prone. <

    The focus of this text is to solve real-world problems using the latest AI techniques. Intelligent systems like expert systems, fuzzy systems, artificial neural networks, genetic algorithms and ant colony systems are discussed in detail with case studies to facilitate in- depth understanding. Since the ultimate goal of AI is the construction of programs to solve problems, an entire chapter has been devoted to the programming languages used in AI problem solving. The theory is well supported by a large number of illustrations and end-chapter exercises. With its comprehensive coverage of the subject in a clear and concise manner this text would be extremely useful not only for undergraduate students, but also to postgraduate students.

    But fully 70 percent of digital transformations fail.Why? Tony Saldanha, a globally awarded industry thought-leader who led operations around the world and major digital changes at Procter & Gamble, discovered it's not due to innovation or technological problems. Rather, the devil is in the details: a lack of clear goals and a disciplined process for achieving them. In this book, Saldanha lays out a five-stage process for moving from digitally automating processes here and there to making digital technology the very backbone of your company. For each of these five stages, Saldanha describes two associated disciplines vital to the success of that stage and a checklist of questions to keep you on track.You want to disrupt before you are disrupted--be the next Netflix, not the next Blockbuster. Using dozens of case studies and his own considerable experience, Saldanha shows how digital transformation can be made routinely successful, and instead of representing an existential threat, it will become the opportunity of a lifetime.

    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

    Asynchronous programming lets you turn your own web sites into smooth, slick, responsive applications that make your users feel like they're back on the information superhighway, not stuck on a dial-up backroad.But who wants to take on next-generation web programming with the last generation's instruction book? You need a learning experience that's as compelling and cutting-edge as the sites you want to design. That's where we come in. With Head Rush Ajax, in no time you'll be writing JavaScript code that fires off asynchronous requests to web servers...and having fun doing it. By the time you've taken your dynamic HTML, XML, JSON, and DOM skills up a few notches, you'll have solved tons of puzzles, figured out how well snowboards sell in Vail, and even watched a boxing match. Sound interesting? Then what are you waiting for? Pick up Head Rush Ajax and learn Ajax and asynchronous programming the right way--the way that sticks.If you've ever read a Head First book, you know what to expect: a visually rich format designed for the way your brain works. Head Rush ramps up the intensity with an even faster look and feel. Have your first working app before you finish Chapter 1, meet up with the nefarious PROJECT: CHAOS stealth team, and even settle the question of the Top 5 Blues CDs of all time. Leave boring, clunky web sites behind with 8-tracks and hot pants--and get going with next-generation web programming."If you thought Ajax was rocket science, this book is for you. Head Rush Ajax puts dynamic, compelling experiences within reach for every web developer." -- Jesse James Garrett, Adaptive Path"A 'technology-meets-reality' book for web pioneers on the cutting edge." -- Valentin Crettaz, CTO, Condris Technologies

    Why wade through a 600-page book when you can begin working productively in a matter of minutes? It's an ideal primer for Mac and PC users of the Internet who need to know a little bit about UNIX on the systems they visit.This book is the most effective introduction to UNIX in print. The fourth edition covers the highlights of the Linux operating system. It's a handy book for someone just starting with UNIX or Linux, as well as someone who encounters a UNIX system on the Internet. And it now includes a quick-reference card.Topics covered include: Linux operating system highlightsLogging in and logging outWindow systems (especially X/Motif)Managing UNIX files and directoriesSending and receiving mailRedirecting input/outputPipes and filtersBackground processingBasic network commandsv