But if one per year is good, how about Seven Languages in Seven Weeks? In this book you'll get a hands-on tour of Clojure, Haskell, Io, Prolog, Scala, Erlang, and Ruby. Whether or not your favorite language is on that list, you'll broaden your perspective of programming by examining these languages side-by-side. You'll learn something new from each, and best of all, you'll learn how to learn a language quickly. Ruby, Io, Prolog, Scala, Erlang, Clojure, Haskell. With Seven Languages in Seven Weeks, by Bruce A. Tate, you'll go beyond the syntax-and beyond the 20-minute tutorial you'll find someplace online. This book has an audacious goal: to present a meaningful exploration of seven languages within a single book. Rather than serve as a complete reference or installation guide, Seven Languages hits what's essential and unique about each language. Moreover, this approach will help teach you how to grok new languages. For each language, you'll solve a nontrivial problem, using techniques that show off the language's most important features. As the book proceeds, you'll discover the strengths and weaknesses of the languages, while dissecting the process of learning languages quickly--for example, finding the typing and programming models, decision structures, and how you interact with them. Among this group of seven, you'll explore the most critical programming models of our time. Learn the dynamic typing that makes Ruby, Python, and Perl so flexible and compelling. Understand the underlying prototype system that's at the heart of JavaScript. See how pattern matching in Prolog shaped the development of Scala and Erlang. Discover how pure functional programming in Haskell is different from the Lisp family of languages, including Clojure. Explore the concurrency techniques that are quickly becoming the backbone of a new generation of Internet applications. Find out how to use Erlang's let-it-crash philosophy for building fault-tolerant systems. Understand the actor model that drives concurrency design in Io and Scala. Learn how Clojure uses versioning to solve some of the most difficult concurrency problems. It's all here, all in one place. Use the concepts from one language to find creative solutions in another-or discover a language that may become one of your favorites.

    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

    Python is considered easy to learn, but there's no quicker way to mastery of the language than learning from an expert teacher. This edition of "Learning Python" puts you in the hands of two expert teachers, Mark Lutz and David Ascher, whose friendly, well-structured prose has guided many a programmer to proficiency with the language. "Learning Python," Second Edition, offers programmers a comprehensive learning tool for Python and object-oriented programming. Thoroughly updated for the numerous language and class presentation changes that have taken place since the release of the first edition in 1999, this guide introduces the basic elements of the latest release of Python 2.3 and covers new features, such as list comprehensions, nested scopes, and iterators/generators. Beyond language features, this edition of "Learning Python" also includes new context for less-experienced programmers, including fresh overviews of object-oriented programming and dynamic typing, new discussions of program launch and configuration options, new coverage of documentation sources, and more. There are also new use cases throughout to make the application of language features more concrete. The first part of "Learning Python" gives programmers all the information they'll need to understand and construct programs in the Python language, including types, operators, statements, classes, functions, modules and exceptions. The authors then present more advanced material, showing how Python performs common tasks by offering real applications and the libraries available for those applications. Each chapter ends with a series of exercises that will test your Python skills and measure your understanding."Learning Python," Second Edition is a self-paced book that allows readers to focus on the core Python language in depth. As you work through the book, you'll gain a deep and complete understanding of the Python language that will help you to understand the larger application-level examples that you'll encounter on your own. If you're interested in learning Python--and want to do so quickly and efficiently--then "Learning Python," Second Edition is your best choice.

    More than four dozen architects -- including Neal Ford, Michael Nygard, and Bill de hOra -- offer advice for communicating with stakeholders, eliminating complexity, empowering developers, and many more practical lessons they've learned from years of experience. Among the 97 principles in this book, you'll find useful advice such as:Don't Put Your Resume Ahead of the Requirements (Nitin Borwankar) Chances Are, Your Biggest Problem Isn't Technical (Mark Ramm) Communication Is King; Clarity and Leadership, Its Humble Servants (Mark Richards) Simplicity Before Generality, Use Before Reuse (Kevlin Henney) For the End User, the Interface Is the System (Vinayak Hegde) It's Never Too Early to Think About Performance (Rebecca Parsons) To be successful as a software architect, you need to master both business and technology. This book tells you what top software architects think is important and how they approach a project. If you want to enhance your career, 97 Things Every Software Architect Should Know is essential reading.

    Drawing on Lopp's management experiences at Apple, Netscape, Symantec, and Borland, this book is full of stories based on companies in the Silicon Valley where people have been known to yell at each other. It is a place full of dysfunctional bright people who are in an incredible hurry to find the next big thing so they can strike it rich and then do it all over again. Among these people are managers, a strange breed of people who through a mystical organizational ritual have been given power over your future and your bank account.Whether you're an aspiring manager, a current manager, or just wondering what the heck a manager does all day, there is a story in this book that will speak to you.

    In this one-of-a-kind text, author V. Anton Spraul breaks down the ways that programmers solve problems and teaches you what other introductory books often ignore: how to Think Like a Programmer. Each chapter tackles a single programming concept, like classes, pointers, and recursion, and open-ended exercises throughout challenge you to apply your knowledge. You'll also learn how to:Split problems into discrete components to make them easier to solve Make the most of code reuse with functions, classes, and libraries Pick the perfect data structure for a particular job Master more advanced programming tools like recursion and dynamic memory Organize your thoughts and develop strategies to tackle particular types of problems Although the book's examples are written in C++, the creative problem-solving concepts they illustrate go beyond any particular language; in fact, they often reach outside the realm of computer science. As the most skillful programmers know, writing great code is a creative art—and the first step in creating your masterpiece is learning to Think Like a Programmer.

    Plenty of books describe what agile development is or why it helps software projects succeed, but very few combine information for developers, managers, testers, and customers into a single package that they can apply directly. This book provides no-nonsense advice on agile planning, development, delivery, and management taken from the authors' many years of experience with Extreme Programming (XP). You get a gestalt view of the agile development process, including comprehensive guidance for non-technical readers and hands-on technical practices for developers and testers. The Art of Agile Development gives you clear answers to questions such as:How can we adopt agile development? Do we really need to pair program? What metrics should we report? What if I can't get my customer to participate? How much documentation should we write? When do we design and architect? As a non-developer, how should I work with my agile team? Where is my product roadmap? How does QA fit in? The book teaches you how to adopt XP practices, describes each practice in detail, then discusses principles that will allow you to modify XP and create your own agile method. In particular, this book tackles the difficult aspects of agile development: the need for cooperation and trust among team members. Whether you're currently part of an agile team, working with an agile team, or interested in agile development, this book provides the practical tips you need to start practicing agile development. As your experience grows, the book will grow with you, providing exercises and information that will teach you first to understand the rules of agile development, break them, and ultimately abandon rules altogether as you master the art of agile development. "Jim Shore and Shane Warden expertly explain the practices and benefits of Extreme Programming. They offer advice from their real-world experiences in leading teams. They answer questions about the practices and show contraindications - ways that a practice may be mis-applied. They offer alternatives you can try if there are impediments to applying a practice, such as the lack of an on-site customer. --Ken Pugh, Author of Jolt Award Winner, Prefactoring "I will leave a copy of this book with every team I visit." --Brian Marick, Exampler Consulting

    Each chapter is relatively self-contained and can be used as a unit of study. The algorithms are described in English and in a pseudocode designed to be readable by anyone who has done a little programming. The explanations have been kept elementary without sacrificing depth of coverage or mathematical rigor.

    With the sophisticated algorithms in this book, you can write smart programs to access interesting datasets from other web sites, collect data from users of your own applications, and analyze and understand the data once you've found it.Programming Collective Intelligence takes you into the world of machine learning and statistics, and explains how to draw conclusions about user experience, marketing, personal tastes, and human behavior in general -- all from information that you and others collect every day. Each algorithm is described clearly and concisely with code that can immediately be used on your web site, blog, Wiki, or specialized application. This book explains:Collaborative filtering techniques that enable online retailers to recommend products or media Methods of clustering to detect groups of similar items in a large dataset Search engine features -- crawlers, indexers, query engines, and the PageRank algorithm Optimization algorithms that search millions of possible solutions to a problem and choose the best one Bayesian filtering, used in spam filters for classifying documents based on word types and other features Using decision trees not only to make predictions, but to model the way decisions are made Predicting numerical values rather than classifications to build price models Support vector machines to match people in online dating sites Non-negative matrix factorization to find the independent features in a dataset Evolving intelligence for problem solving -- how a computer develops its skill by improving its own code the more it plays a game Each chapter includes exercises for extending the algorithms to make them more powerful. Go beyond simple database-backed applications and put the wealth of Internet data to work for you. "Bravo! I cannot think of a better way for a developer to first learn these algorithms and methods, nor can I think of a better way for me (an old AI dog) to reinvigorate my knowledge of the details."-- Dan Russell, Google "Toby's book does a great job of breaking down the complex subject matter of machine-learning algorithms into practical, easy-to-understand examples that can be directly applied to analysis of social interaction across the Web today. If I had this book two years ago, it would have saved precious time going down some fruitless paths."-- Tim Wolters, CTO, Collective Intellect

    In this book, Agile Alliance cofounder Mike Cohn discusses the philosophy of agile estimating and planning and shows you exactly how to get the job done, with real-world examples and case studies.Concepts are clearly illustrated and readers are guided, step by step, toward how to answer the following questions: What will we build? How big will it be? When must it be done? How much can I really complete by then? You will first learn what makes a good plan-and then what makes it agile.Using the techniques in Agile Estimating and Planning , you can stay agile from start to finish, saving time, conserving resources, and accomplishing more. Highlights include:Why conventional prescriptive planning fails and why agile planning works How to estimate feature size using story points and ideal days--and when to use each How and when to re-estimate How to prioritize features using both financial and nonfinancial approaches How to split large features into smaller, more manageable ones How to plan iterations and predict your team's initial rate of progress How to schedule projects that have unusually high uncertainty or schedule-related risk How to estimate projects that will be worked on by multiple teams Agile Estimating and Planning supports any agile, semiagile, or iterative process, including Scrum, XP, Feature-Driven Development, Crystal, Adaptive Software Development, DSDM, Unified Process, and many more. It will be an indispensable resource for every development manager, team leader, and team member.

    Lead your team as a software architect, ask the right stakeholders the right questions, explore design options, and help your team implement a system that promotes the right -ilities. Share your design decisions, facilitate collaborative design workshops that are fast, effective, and fun-and develop more awesome software!With dozens of design methods, examples, and practical know-how, Design It! shows you how to become a software architect. Walk through the core concepts every architect must know, discover how to apply them, and learn a variety of skills that will make you a better programmer, leader, and designer. Uncover the big ideas behind software architecture and gain confidence working on projects big and small. Plan, design, implement, and evaluate software architectures and collaborate with your team, stakeholders, and other architects. Identify the right stakeholders and understand their needs, dig for architecturally significant requirements, write amazing quality attribute scenarios, and make confident decisions. Choose technologies based on their architectural impact, facilitate architecture-centric design workshops, and evaluate architectures using lightweight, effective methods. Write lean architecture descriptions people love to read. Run an architecture design studio, implement the architecture you've designed, and grow your team's architectural knowledge. Good design requires good communication. Talk about your software architecture with stakeholders using whiteboards, documents, and code, and apply architecture-focused design methods in your day-to-day practice. Hands-on exercises, real-world scenarios, and practical team-based decision-making tools will get everyone on board and give you the experience you need to become a confident software architect.

    But the state-of-the-art has moved forward dramatically since Meyers last updated this book in 1997. (For instance, there s now STL. Design patterns. Even new functionality being added through TR1 and Boost.) So Meyers has done a top-to-bottom rewrite, identifying the 55 most valuable techniques you need now to be exceptionally effective with C++. Over half of this edition s content is new. Templates broadly impact C++ development, and you ll find them everywhere. There s extensive coverage of multithreaded systems. There s an entirely new chapter on resource management. You ll find substantial new coverage of exceptions. Much is gained, but nothing s lost: You ll find the same depth of practical insight that first made Effective C++ a classic all those years ago. Bill Camarda, from the July 2005 href="http://www.barnesandnoble.com/newslet... Only

    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 "

    The long-anticipated revision of this best-selling text offers the most comprehensive, up-to-date introduction to the theory and practice of artificial intelligence. *NEW-Nontechnical learning material-Accompanies each part of the book. *NEW-The Internet as a sample application for intelligent systems-Added in several places including logical agents, planning, and natural language. *NEW-Increased coverage of material - Includes expanded coverage of: default reasoning and truth maintenance systems, including multi-agent/distributed AI and game theory; probabilistic approaches to learning including EM; more detailed descriptions of probabilistic inference algorithms. *NEW-Updated and expanded exercises-75% of the exercises are revised, with 100 new exercises. *NEW-On-line Java software. *Makes it easy for students to do projects on the web using intelligent agents. *A unified, agent-based approach to AI-Organizes the material around the task of building intelligent agents. *Comprehensive, up-to-date coverage-Includes a unified view of the field organized around the rational decision making pa

    Leading Scrum coach and trainer Kenny Rubin illuminates the values, principles, and practices of Scrum, and describes flexible, proven approaches that can help you implement it far more effectively. Whether you are new to Scrum or years into your use, this book will introduce, clarify, and deepen your Scrum knowledge at the team, product, and portfolio levels. Drawing from Rubin's experience helping hundreds of organizations succeed with Scrum, this book provides easy-to-digest descriptions enhanced by more than two hundred illustrations based on an entirely new visual icon language for describing Scrum's roles, artifacts, and activities. Essential Scrum will provide every team member, manager, and executive with a common understanding of Scrum, a shared vocabulary they can use in applying it, and practical knowledge for deriving maximum value from it.