New languages, new frameworks, new ways of doing things - a constant struggle just to stay current in the industry. This left no time to learn the foundational concepts and skills that come with a degree in Computer Science.

    You d be up to your neck in normal forms before you even had a chance to wade. When Michael J. Hernandez needed a database design book to teach mere mortals like himself, there were none. So he began a personal quest to learn enough to write one. And he did.Now in its Second Edition, Database Design for Mere Mortals is a miracle for today s generation of database users who don t have the background -- or the time -- to learn database design the hard way. It s also a secret pleasure for working pros who are occasionally still trying to figure out what they were taught.Drawing on 13 years of database teaching experience, Hernandez has organized database design into several key principles that are surprisingly easy to understand and remember. He illuminates those principles using examples that are generic enough to help you with virtually any application.Hernandez s goals are simple. You ll learn how to create a sound database structure as easily as possible. You ll learn how to optimize your structure for efficiency and data integrity. You ll learn how to avoid problems like missing, incorrect, mismatched, or inaccurate data. You ll learn how to relate tables together to make it possible to get whatever answers you need in the future -- even if you haven t thought of the questions yet.If -- as is often the case -- you already have a database, Hernandez explains how to analyze it -- and leverage it. You ll learn how to identify new information requirements, determine new business rules that need to be applied, and apply them.Hernandez starts with an introduction to databases, relational databases, and the idea and objectives of database design. Next, you ll walk through the key elements of the database design process: establishing table structures and relationships, assigning primary keys, setting field specifications, and setting up views. Hernandez s extensive coverage of data integrity includes a full chapter on establishing business rules and using validation tables.Hernandez surveys bad design techniques in a chapter on what not to do -- and finally, helps you identify those rare instances when it makes sense to bend or even break the conventional rules of database design.There s plenty that s new in this edition. Hernandez has gone over his text and illustrations with a fine-tooth comb to improve their already impressive clarity. You ll find updates to reflect new advances in technology, including web database applications. There are expanded and improved discussions of nulls and many-to-many relationships; multivalued fields; primary keys; and SQL data type fields. There s a new Quick Reference database design flowchart. A new glossary. New review questions at the end of every chapter.Finally, it s worth mentioning what this book isn t. It isn t a guide to any specific database platform -- so you can use it whether you re running Access, SQL Server, or Oracle, MySQL or PostgreSQL. And it isn t an SQL guide. (If that s what you need, Michael J. Hernandez has also coauthored the superb SQL Queries for Mere Mortals). But if database design is what you need to learn, this book s worth its weight in gold. Bill CamardaBill Camarda is a consultant, writer, and web/multimedia content developer. His 15 books include Special Edition Using Word 2000 and Upgrading & Fixing Networks for Dummies, Second Edition.

    The best description of the first edition comes from two Amazon reviewers; the first proclaiming, "I got the same feeling of enlightenment when reading this one as I did all those years ago when I read the classic book "Code Complete" and the second stating "This is the first game book I have read that I was sorry when I got to the end because there wasn't any more."For Game Coding Complete, Second Edition, McShaffry returns with many more of his highly popular, shoot-from the hips war stories and expert game programming insight that only a real insider could provide. McShaffry uses his experience as a leading programmer for Origin Systems, Microsoft, and Ion Storm a division of Eidos, to illustrate real-world techniques and solutions, including examples from his recent work on the major game, Thief Deadly Shadows. Game Coding Complete, Second Edition takes programmers through the complete process of developing a professional quality game using hundreds of insider tricks and techniques developed and perfect by the author from over a decade of game development experience. It covers a range of topics that will appeal to the most discriminating programmers such as key "gotcha" issues that could trip up even veteran programmers. The new edition features expanded coverage of 3D programming, several new chapters on game interface design, game audio, game scripting, game engine technology, code optimization, production and scheduling, plus it now includes a CD-ROM packed with valuable source code and game development tools. The appendix offers solid advice on starting your own game company. The C++ language is used to explain specific programming concepts with added discussion of development with C# and Managed DirectX programming.

    Salesforce.com (more than 50%) and Twitter (more than 75% fall into this category. Ebay gets more than 8 billion API calls a month. Facebook and Google, have dozens of APIs that enable both free services and e-commerce, get more than 5 billion API calls each day. Other companies like NetFlix have expanded their service of streaming movies over the the web to dozens of devices using API. At peak times, more than 20 percent of all traffic is accounted for by Netflix through its APIs. Companies like Sears and E-Trade are opening up their catalogs and other services to allow developers and entrepreneurs to create new marketing experiences. Making an API work to create a new channel is not just a matter of technology. An API must be considered in terms of business strategy, marketing, and operations as well as the technical aspects of programming. This book, written by Greg Brail, CTO of Apigee, and Brian Mulloy, VP of Products, captures the knowledge of all these areas gained by Apigee, the leading company in supporting the rollout of high traffic APIs.

    Each idiom comes with a detailed description, example code showing the "wrong" way to do it, and code for the idiomatic, "Pythonic" alternative. *This version of the book is for Python 2.7.3+. There is also a Python 3.3+ version available.* "Writing Idiomatic Python" contains the most common and important Python idioms in a format that maximizes identification and understanding. Each idiom is presented as a recommendation to write some commonly used piece of code. It is followed by an explanation of why the idiom is important. It also contains two code samples: the "Harmful" way to write it and the "Idiomatic" way. * The "Harmful" way helps you identify the idiom in your own code. * The "Idiomatic" way shows you how to easily translate that code into idiomatic Python. This book is perfect for you: * If you're coming to Python from another programming language * If you're learning Python as a first programming language * If you're looking to increase the readability, maintainability, and correctness of your Python code What is "Idiomatic" Python? Every programming language has its own idioms. Programming language idioms are nothing more than the generally accepted way of writing a certain piece of code. Consistently writing idiomatic code has a number of important benefits: * Others can read and understand your code easily * Others can maintain and enhance your code with minimal effort * Your code will contain fewer bugs * Your code will teach others to write correct code without any effort on your part

    Yet they can't always articulate their ideas clearly enough for you to turn them into code. The Cucumber Book dives straight into the core of the problem: communication between people. Cucumber saves the day; it's a testing, communication, and requirements tool - all rolled into one. We'll show you how to express your customers' wild ideas as a set of clear, executable specifications that everyone on the team can read. You'll learn how to feed those examples into Cucumber and let it guide your development. You'll build just the right code to keep your customers happy, and not a line more. The first part of the book teaches you how to use the core features of Cucumber. You'll learn how to use Cucumber's Gherkin DSL to describe-- in plain language - the behavior your customers want from the system. You'll learn how to write Ruby code that interprets those plain language specifications and checks them against your application. In Part 2, you'll consolidate the knowledge you just gained with a worked example. Although it was born in the Ruby community, you can use Cucumber to test almost any system, from a simple shell script or a Perl script, to enterprise PHP or a Java web application. In Part 3, you'll find a selection of recipes for some of the most common situations you'll encounter using Cucumber in the wild. You'll learn how to test Ajax-heavy web applications with Capybara and Selenium, REST web services, Ruby on Rails applications, command-line applications, legacy applications and lots more! Written by the creator of Cucumber and one of its most experienced users and contributors, The Cucumber Book is an authoritative guide that will give you and your team all the knowledge you need to start using Cucumber with confidence. What You Need: Windows, Mac OS X (with XCode) or Linux Ruby 1.9.2 and upwards

    Though it may not seem this way for those who have been in the field for most of their careers, in the overall scheme of professions, software builders are relative "newbies." In the short history of the software field, a lot of facts have been identified, and a lot of fallacies promulgated. Those facts and fallacies are what this book is about. There's a problem with those facts-and, as you might imagine, those fallacies. Many of these fundamentally important facts are learned by a software engineer, but over the short lifespan of the software field, all too many of them have been forgotten. While reading Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering , you may experience moments of "Oh, yes, I had forgotten that," alongside some "Is that really true?" thoughts. The author of this book doesn't shy away from controversy. In fact, each of the facts and fallacies is accompanied by a discussion of whatever controversy envelops it. You may find yourself agreeing with a lot of the facts and fallacies, yet emotionally disturbed by a few of them! Whether you agree or disagree, you will learn why the author has been called "the premier curmudgeon of software practice." These facts and fallacies are fundamental to the software building field-forget or neglect them at your peril!

    Only then do you write the code itself and, with the test spurring you on, you improve your design. In acceptance test driven development (ATDD), you use the same technique to implement product features, benefiting from iterative development, rapid feedback cycles, and better-defined requirements. TDD and its supporting tools and techniques lead to better software faster.Test Driven brings under one cover practical TDD techniques distilled from several years of community experience. With examples in Java and the Java EE environment, it explores both the techniques and the mindset of TDD and ATDD. It uses carefully chosen examples to illustrate TDD tools and design patterns, not in the abstract but concretely in the context of the technologies you face at work. It is accessible to TDD beginners, and it offers effective and less well known techniques to older TDD hands.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 hands-on to test drive Java codeHow to avoid common TDD adoption pitfallsAcceptance test driven development and the Fit frameworkHow to test Java EE components-Servlets, JSPs, and Spring ControllersTough issues like multithreaded programs and data access code

    It guides you step by step from simple tests to tests that are maintainable, readable, and trustworthy. It covers advanced subjects like mocks, stubs, and frameworks such as Typemock Isolator and Rhino Mocks. And you'll learn about advanced test patterns and organization, working with legacy code and even untestable code. The book discusses tools you need when testing databases and other technologies. It's written for .NET developers but others will also benefit from this book.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.Table of ContentsThe basics of unit testingA first unit testUsing stubs to break dependenciesInteraction testing using mock objectsIsolation (mock object) frameworksTest hierarchies and organizationThe pillars of good testsIntegrating unit testing into the organizationWorking with legacy code

    By scale, we mean having numbers of users in the millions and being built by large engineering teams.For mobile engineers, this book is a blueprint for modern app engineering approaches. For non-mobile engineers and managers, it is a resource with which to build empathy and appreciation for the complexity of world-class mobile engineering.

    You need to assume it will run in the most hostile environments imaginable -- and design, code, and test accordingly. Writing Secure Code, Second Edition shows you how. This edition draws on the lessons learned and taught throughout Microsoft during the firm s massive 2002 Windows Security Push. It s a huge upgrade to the respected First Edition, with new coverage across the board. Michael Howard and David LeBlanc first help you define what security means to your customers -- and implement a three-pronged strategy for securing design, defaults, and deployment. There s especially useful coverage of threat modeling -- decomposing your application, identifying threats, ranking them, and mitigating them. Then, it s on to in-depth coverage of today s key security issues from the developer s standpoint. Everyone knows buffer overruns are bad: Here s a full chapter on avoiding them. You ll learn how to establish appropriate access controls and default to running with least privilege. There s detailed coverage of overcoming attacks on cryptography (for example, avoiding poor random numbers and bit-flipping attacks). You ll learn countermeasures for virtually every form of user input attack, from malicious database updates to cross-site scripting. We ve just scratched the surface: There are authoritative techniques for securing sockets and RPC, protecting against DOS attacks, building safer .NET applications, reviewing and testing code, adding privacy features, and even writing high-quality security documentation. Following these techniques won t just improve security -- it ll dramatically improve robustness and reliability, too. Bill CamardaBill Camarda is a consultant, writer, and web/multimedia content developer. His 15 books include Special Edition Using Word 2000 and Upgrading & Fixing Networks For Dummies®, Second Edition.

    In a very short amount of time, he is able to present an issue, fix it and conclude it; each chapter is tight, succinct, and to the point." --Josh Holmes, Independent Contractor "The book provides a good introduction to the C# language elements from a pragmatic point of view, identifying best practices along the way, and following a clear and logical progression from the basic syntax to creating components to improving your code writing skills. Since each topic is covered in short entries, it is very easy to read and you'll quickly realize the benefits of the book." --Tomas Restrepo, Microsoft MVP "The book covers the basics well, especially with respect to the decisions needed when deriving classes from System.Object. It is easy to read with examples that are clear, concise and solid. I think it will bring good value to most readers." --Rob Steel, Central Region Integration COE & Lead Architect, Microsoft "Effective C# provides the C# developer with the tools they need to rapidly grow their experience in Visual C# 2003 while also providing insight into the many improvements to the language that will be hitting a desktop near you in the form of Visual C# 2005." --Doug Holland, Precision Objects "Part of the point of the .NET Framework--and the C# Language, in particular--is to let the developer focus solving customer problems and deliver product, rather than spending hours (or even weeks) writing plumbing code. Bill Wagner's Effective C#, not only shows you what's going on behind the scenes, but shows you how to take advantage of particular C# code constructs. Written in a dispassionate style that focuses on the facts--and just the facts--of writing effective C# code, Wagner's book drills down into practices that will let you write C# applications and components that are easier to maintain as well as faster to run. I'm recommending Effective C# to all students of my .NET BootCamp and other C#-related courses." --Richard Hale Shaw, www.RichardHaleShawGroup.com C#'s resemblances to C++, Java, and C make it easier to learn, but there's a downside: C# programmers often continue to use older techniques when far better alternatives are available. In Effective C#, respected .NET expert Bill Wagner identifies fifty ways you can start leveraging the full power of C# in order to write faster, more efficient, and more reliable software. Effective C# follows the format that made Effective C++ (Addison-Wesley, 1998) and Effective Java (Addison-Wesley, 2001) indispensable to hundreds of thousands of developers: clear, practical explanations, expert tips, and plenty of realistic code examples. Drawing on his unsurpassed C# experience, Wagner addresses everything from value types to assemblies, exceptions to reflection. Along the way, he shows exactly how to avoid dozens of common C# performance and reliability pitfalls. You'll learn how to: Use both types of C# constants for efficiency and maintainability, see item 2 Use immutable data types to eliminate unnecessary error checking, see item 7 Avoid the C# function that'll practically always get you in trouble, see item 10 Minimize garbage collection, boxing, and unboxing, see items 16 and 17

    Get the most out of BDD in Ruby with The RSpec Book, written by the lead developer of RSpec, David Chelimsky. You'll get started right away with RSpec 2 and Cucumber by developing a simple game, using Cucumber to express high-level requirements in language your customer understands, and RSpec to express more granular requirements that focus on the behavior of individual objects in the system. You'll learn how to use test doubles (mocks and stubs) to control the environment and focus the RSpec examples on one object at a time, and how to customize RSpec to "speak" in the language of your domain. You'll develop Rails 3 applications and use companion tools such as Webrat and Selenium to express requirements for web applications both in memory and in the browser. And you'll learn to specify Rails views, controllers, and models, each in complete isolation from the other. Whether you're developing applications, frameworks, or the libraries that power them, The RSpec Book will help you write better code, better tests, and deliver better software to happier users.

    The aim of The Node Beginner Book is to get you started with developing applications for Node.js, teaching you everything you need to know about advanced JavaScript along the way on 59 pages.

    Tracy Kidder got a preview of this world in the late 1970s when he observed the engineers of Data General design and build a new 32-bit minicomputer in just one year. His thoughtful, prescient book, The Soul of a New Machine, tells stories of 35-year-old "veteran" engineers hiring recent college graduates and encouraging them to work harder and faster on complex and difficult projects, exploiting the youngsters' ignorance of normal scheduling processes while engendering a new kind of work ethic.These days, we are used to the "total commitment" philosophy of managing technical creation, but Kidder was surprised and even a little alarmed at the obsessions and compulsions he found. From in-house political struggles to workers being permitted to tease management to marathon 24-hour work sessions, The Soul of a New Machine explores concepts that already seem familiar, even old-hat, less than 20 years later. Kidder plainly admires his subjects; while he admits to hopeless confusion about their work, he finds their dedication heroic. The reader wonders, though, what will become of it all, now and in the future. —Rob Lightner