Author John Myles White shows you how this powerful class of algorithms can help you boost website traffic, convert visitors to customers, and increase many other measures of success.This is the first developer-focused book on bandit algorithms, which were previously described only in research papers. You’ll quickly learn the benefits of several simple algorithms—including the epsilon-Greedy, Softmax, and Upper Confidence Bound (UCB) algorithms—by working through code examples written in Python, which you can easily adapt for deployment on your own website.Learn the basics of A/B testing—and recognize when it’s better to use bandit algorithmsDevelop a unit testing framework for debugging bandit algorithmsGet additional code examples written in Julia, Ruby, and JavaScript with supplemental online materials

    Written by the developer of the Ruby project Prawn, this concise book explains how to design beautiful APIs and domain-specific languages with Ruby, as well as how to work with functional programming ideas and techniques that can simplify your code and make you more productive. You'll learn how to write code that's readable, expressive, and much more.Ruby Best Practices will help you:Understand the secret powers unlocked by Ruby's code blocks Learn how to bend Ruby code without breaking it, such as mixing in modules on the fly Discover the ins and outs of testing and debugging, and how to design for testability Learn to write faster code by keeping things simple Develop strategies for text processing and file management, including regular expressions Understand how and why things can go wrong Reduce cultural barriers by leveraging Ruby's multilingual capabilities This book also offers you comprehensive chapters on driving code through tests, designing APIs, and project maintenance. Learn how to make the most of this rich, beautiful language with Ruby Best Practices.

    "The Rails(TM) 3 Way"is the only comprehensive, authoritative guide to delivering production-quality code with Rails 3. Pioneering Rails expert Obie Fernandez and a team of leading experts illuminate the entire Rails 3 API, along with the idioms, design approaches, and libraries that make developing applications with Rails so powerful. Drawing on their unsurpassed experience and track record, they address the real challenges development teams face, showing how to use Rails 3 to maximize your productivity. Using numerous detailed code examples, the author systematically covers Rails 3 key capabilities and subsystems, making this book a reference that you will turn to again and again. He presents advanced Rails programming techniques that have been proven effective in day-to-day usage on dozens of production Rails systems and offers important insights into behavior-driven development and production considerations such as scalability. Dive deep into the Rails 3 codebase and discover why Rails is designed the way it is--and how to make it do what you want it to do.This book will help youLearn what's new in Rails 3 Increase your productivity as a web application developer Realize the overall joy in programming with Rails Leverage Rails' powerful capabilities for building REST-compliant APIs Drive implementation and protect long-term maintainability using RSpec Design and manipulate your domain layer using Active Record Understand and program complex program flows using Action Controller Master sophisticated URL routing concepts Use Ajax techniques via Rails 3 support for unobtrusive JavaScript Learn to extend Rails with popular gems and plugins, and how to write your own Extend Rails with the best third-party plug-ins and write your own Integrate email services into your applications with Action Mailer Improve application responsiveness with background processing Create your own non-Active Record domain classes using Active Model Master Rails' utility classes and extensions in Active Support

    Running examples and case studies highlight new concepts and alternative approaches to program design.

    In cultivating a deep understanding and appreciation of Objective-C, its frameworks and ecosystem, one is able to create apps that delight and inspire users. Combining articles from NSHipster.com with new essays, this book is the essential guide for modern iOS and Mac OS X developers.

    You’ll learn how each of these platform-agnostic patterns work, when they might be useful in the cloud, and what impact they’ll have on your application architecture. You’ll also see an example of each pattern applied to an application built with Windows Azure.The patterns are organized into four major topics, such as scalability and handling failure, and primer chapters provide background on each topic. With the information in this book, you’ll be able to make informed decisions for designing effective cloud-native applications that maximize the value of cloud services, while also paying attention to user experience and operational efficiency.Learn about architectural patterns for:Scalability. Discover the advantages of horizontal scaling. Patterns covered include Horizontally Scaling Compute, Queue-Centric Workflow, and Auto-Scaling.Big data. Learn how to handle large amounts of data across a distributed system. Eventual consistency is explained, along with the MapReduce and Database Sharding patterns.Handling failure. Understand how multitenant cloud services and commodity hardware influence your applications. Patterns covered include Busy Signal and Node Failure.Distributed users. Learn how to overcome delays due to network latency when building applications for a geographically distributed user base. Patterns covered include Colocation, Valet Key, CDN, and Multi-Site Deployment.

     Test-Driven JavaScript Development is a complete, best-practice guide to agile JavaScript testing and quality assurance with the test-driven development (TDD) methodology. Leading agile JavaScript developer Christian Johansen covers all aspects of applying state-of-the-art automated testing in JavaScript environments, walking readers through the entire development lifecycle, from project launch to application deployment, and beyond.Using real-life examples driven by unit tests, Johansen shows how to use TDD to gain greater confidence in your code base, so you can fearlessly refactor and build more robust, maintainable, and reliable JavaScript code at lower cost. Throughout, he addresses crucial issues ranging from code design to performance optimization, offering realistic solutions for developers, QA specialists, and testers.Coverage includes - Understanding automated testing and TDD - Building effective automated testing workflows - Testing code for both browsers and servers (using Node.js) - Using TDD to build cleaner APIs, better modularized code, and more robust software - Writing testable code - Using test stubs and mocks to test units in isolation - Continuously improving code through refactoring - Walking through the construction and automated testing of fully functional softwareThe accompanying Web site, tddjs.com, contains all of the book's code listings and additional resources.

    And one very annoyed world.Based on the ingenious Sir Michael Twitter account, How to (Almost) Make Friends on the Internet is the funniest book you'll read this year.Whether it's offering his services as a Karate Lawyer or Funeral DJ, devising the world's worst plan to get a free haircut, or trying to buy a blue bucket that may or may not be for sale, Michael just wants to connect with people.The only problem is that people are slightly less enthusiastic about connecting with him, and the results are utterly hilarious.Warning: you'll never think about adding someone called Michael to a group chat the same way ever again.

    If you're anexperienced developer, you can start creating robust mobile Androidapps right away with this professional guide to Android 4application development. Written by one of Google's lead Androiddeveloper advocates, this practical book walks you through a seriesof hands-on projects that illustrate the features of the AndroidSDK. That includes all the new APIs introduced in Android 3 and 4, including building for tablets, using the Action Bar, Wi-Fi Direct, NFC Beam, and more.Shows experienced developers how to create mobile applicationsfor Android smartphones and tabletsRevised and expanded to cover all the Android SDK releasesincluding Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich), including all updatedAPIs, and the latest changes to the Android platform.Explains new and enhanced features such as drag and drop, fragments, the action bar, enhanced multitouch support, newenvironmental sensor support, major improvements to the animationframework, and a range of new communications techniques includingNFC and Wi-Fi direct.Provides practical guidance on publishing and marketing yourapplications, best practices for user experience, and moreThis book helps you learn to master the design, lifecycle, andUI of an Android app through practical exercises, which you canthen use as a basis for developing your own Android apps.

    It also provides an overview of different security topics such as identifying, categorizing and protecting your assets on AWS, managing access to AWS resources using accounts, users and groups and suggesting ways you can secure your data, your operating systems and applications and overall infrastructure in the cloud.

    This text is split into distinct sections, each concentrating on a core angle of the language. The book also contains sections for Web and application development, the two most popular uses for Python. It is designed to teach a programmer how to use Python by explaining the mechanics of Python. The appendixes offer a quick guide to the main features of the Python language, as well as additional guides to non-essential systems such as the IDLE development environment and general guidelines for migrating from another language.

    Erlang is gaining widespread adoption with the advent of multi-core processors and their new scalable approach to concurrency. With this guide you'll learn how to write complex concurrent programs in Erlang, regardless of your programming background or experience. Written by leaders of the international Erlang community -- and based on their training material -- Erlang Programming focuses on the language's syntax and semantics, and explains pattern matching, proper lists, recursion, debugging, networking, and concurrency. This book helps you:Understand the strengths of Erlang and why its designers included specific features Learn the concepts behind concurrency and Erlang's way of handling it Write efficient Erlang programs while keeping code neat and readable Discover how Erlang fills the requirements for distributed systems Add simple graphical user interfaces with little effort Learn Erlang's tracing mechanisms for debugging concurrent and distributed systems Use the built-in Mnesia database and other table storage features Erlang Programming provides exercises at the end of each chapter and simple examples throughout the book.

    This lively book reveals oddities of the Java programming language through entertaining and thought-provoking programming puzzles.--Guy Steele, Sun Fellow and coauthor of The Java(TM) Language SpecificationI laughed, I cried, I threw up (my hands in admiration).--Tim Peierls, president, Prior Artisans LLC, and member of the JSR 166 Expert GroupHow well do you really know Java? Are you a code sleuth? Have you ever spent days chasing a bug caused by a trap or pitfall in Java or its libraries? Do you like brainteasers? Then this is the book for you!In the tradition of Effective Java(TM), Bloch and Gafter dive deep into the subtleties of the Java programming language and its core libraries. Illustrated with visually stunning optical illusions, Java(TM) Puzzlers features 95 diabolical puzzles that educate and entertain. Anyone with a working knowledge of Java will understand the puzzles, but even the most seasoned veteran will find them challenging.Most of the puzzles take the form of a short program whose behavior isn't what it seems. Can you figure out what it does? Puzzles are grouped loosely according to the features they use, and detailed solutions follow each puzzle. The solutions go well beyond a simple explanation of the program's behavior--they show you how to avoid the underlying traps and pitfalls for good. A handy catalog of traps and pitfalls at the back of the book provides a concise taxonomy for future reference.Solve these puzzles and you'll never again fall prey to the counterintuitive or obscure behaviors that can fool even the most experienced programmers.

    This book helps you learn the fundamentals of Clojure with examples relating it to the languages you know already, in the domains and topics you work with every day. See how this JVM language can help eliminate unnecessary complexity from your programming practice and open up new options for solving the most challenging problems. Clojure Programming demonstrates the language's flexibility by showing how it can be used for common tasks like web programming and working with databases, up through more demanding applications that require safe, effective concurrency and parallelism, data and statistical analysis, and more. This in-depth look helps tie together the full Clojure development experience, from how to organize your project and an introduction to Clojure build tooling, to a tutorial on how to make the most of Clojure’s REPL during development, and how to deploy your finished application in a cloud environment.Learn how to use Clojure without losing your investment in the Java platform Understand the advantages of Clojure as an efficient Lisp for the JVM See how Clojure is used today in several practical domains Discover how Clojure eliminates the need for many verbose and complicated design patterns Deploy large web applications across tens or hundreds of cloud nodes with Clojure

    With Head First jQuery, you'll quickly get up to speed on this amazing JavaScript library by learning how to navigate HTML documents while handling events, effects, callbacks, and animations. By the time you've completed the book, you'll be incorporating Ajax apps, working seamlessly with HTML and CSS, and handling data with PHP, MySQL and JSON.If you want to learn—and understand—how to create interactive web pages, unobtrusive script, and cool animations that don't kill your browser, this book is for you.Use jQuery with DOM to overcome the limitations of HTML and CSSLearn how jQuery selectors and actions work togetherWrite functions and wire them to interface elementsUse jQuery effects to create actions on the pageMake your pages come alive with animationBuild interactive web pages with jQuery and AjaxBuild forms in web applications