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.

    You’ll learn to spot which tests are performing, which need refactoring, and which need to be deleted entirely! Upgrade your testing suite with new testing styles, good patterns, and reliable automated testing.

    The problem is that all of those lines of JavaScript code can slow down your apps. This book reveals techniques and strategies to help you eliminate performance bottlenecks during development. You'll learn how to improve execution time, downloading, interaction with the DOM, page life cycle, and more. Yahoo! frontend engineer Nicholas C. Zakas and five other JavaScript experts -- Ross Harmes, Julien Lecomte, Steven Levithan, Stoyan Stefanov, and Matt Sweeney -- demonstrate optimal ways to load code onto a page, and offer programming tips to help your JavaScript run as efficiently and quickly as possible. You'll learn the best practices to build and deploy your files to a production environment, and tools that can help you find problems once your site goes live. Identify problem code and use faster alternatives to accomplish the same task Improve scripts by learning how JavaScript stores and accesses data Implement JavaScript code so that it doesn't slow down interaction with the DOM Use optimization techniques to improve runtime performance Learn ways to ensure the UI is responsive at all times Achieve faster client-server communication Use a build system to minify files, and HTTP compression to deliver them to the browser

    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.

    Find out how the Swedish police combined XP, Scrum, and Kanban in a 60-person project. From start to finish, you'll see how to deliver a successful product using Lean principles. We start with an organization in desperate need of a new way of doing things and finish with a group of sixty, all working in sync to develop a scalable, complex system. You'll walk through the project step by step, from customer engagement, to the daily "cocktail party," version control, bug tracking, and release. In this honest look at what works--and what doesn't--you'll find out how to: Make quality everyone's business, not just the testers. Keep everyone moving in the same direction without micromanagement. Use simple and powerful metrics to aid in planning and process improvement. Balance between low-level feature focus and high-level system focus. You'll be ready to jump into the trenches and streamline your own development process.ContentsForewordPrefacePART I: HOW WE WORK1. About the Project1.1 Timeline 51.2 How We Sliced the Elephant 61.3 How We Involved the Customer 72. Structuring the Teams3. Attending the Daily Cocktail Party3.1 First Tier: Feature Team Daily Stand-up3.2 Second Tier: Sync Meetings per Specialty3.3 Third Tier: Project Sync Meeting4. The Project Board4.1 Our Cadences4.2 How We Handle Urgent Issues and Impediments5. Scaling the Kanban Boards6. Tracking the High-Level Goal7. Defining Ready and Done7.1 Ready for Development7.2 Ready for System Test7.3 How This Improved Collaboration 8. Handling Tech Stories8.1 Example 1: System Test Bottleneck8.2 Example 2: Day Before the Release8.3 Example 3: The 7-Meter Class9. Handling Bugs9.1 Continuous System Test9.2 Fix the Bugs Immediately9.3 Why We Limit the Number of Bugs in the Bug Tracker9.4 Visualizing Bugs9.5 Preventing Recurring Bugs10. Continuously Improving the Process10.1 Team Retrospectives10.2 Process Improvement Workshops10.3 Managing the Rate of Change11. Managing Work in Progress11.1 Using WIP Limits11.2 Why WIP Limits Apply Only to Features12. Capturing and Using Process Metrics12.1 Velocity (Features per Week)12.2 Why We Don’t Use Story Points12.3 Cycle Time (Weeks per Feature)12.4 Cumulative Flow12.5 Process Cycle Efficiency13. Planning the Sprint and Release13.1 Backlog Grooming13.2 Selecting the Top Ten Features13.3 Why We Moved Backlog Grooming Out of the Sprint Planning Meeting13.4 Planning the Release14. How We Do Version Control14.1 No Junk on the Trunk14.2 Team Branches14.3 System Test Branch15. Why We Use Only Physical Kanban Boards16. What We Learned16.1 Know Your Goal16.2 Experiment16.3 Embrace Failure16.4 Solve Real Problems16.5 Have Dedicated Change Agents16.6 Involve PeoplePART II: A CLOSER LOOK AT THE TECHNIQUES 17. Agile and Lean in a Nutshell17.1 Agile in a Nutshell17.2 Lean in a Nutshell17.3 Scrum in a Nutshell17.4 XP in a Nutshell17.5 Kanban in a Nutshell18. Reducing the Test Automation Backlog18.1 What to Do About It18.2 How to Improve Test Coverage a Little Bit Each Iteration18.3 Step 1: List Your Test Cases18.4 Step 2: Classify Each Test18.5 Step 3: Sort the List in Priority Order18.6 Step 4: Automate a Few Tests Each Iteration18.7 Does This Solve the Problem?19. Sizing the Backlog with Planning Poker19.1 Estimating Without Planning Poker19.2 Estimating with Planning Poker19.3 Special Cards20. Cause-Effect Diagrams20.1 Solve Problems, Not Symptoms20.2 The Lean Problem-Solving Approach: A3 Thinking20.3 How to Use Cause-Effect Diagrams20.4 Example 1: Long Release Cycle20.5 Example 2: Defects Released to Production20.6 Example 3: Lack of Pair Programming20.7 Example 4: Lots of Problems20.8 Practical Issues: How to Create and Maintain the Diagrams20.9 Pitfalls20.10 Why Use Cause-Effect Diagrams?21. Final WordsA1. Glossary: How We Avoid Buzzword BingoIndex

    What has been missing from the agile literature is a solid, practical book on the specifics of developing large projects in an agile way. Dean Leffingwell's book Scaling Software Agility fills this gap admirably. It offers a practical guide to large project issues such as architecture, requirements development, multi-level release planning, and team organization. Leffingwell's book is a necessary guide for large projects and large organizations making the transition to agile development." -Jim Highsmith, director, Agile Practice, Cutter Consortium, author of Agile Project Management "There's tension between building software fast and delivering software that lasts, between being ultra-responsive to changes in the market and maintaining a degree of stability. In his latest work, Scaling Software Agility, Dean Leffingwell shows how to achieve a pragmatic balance among these forces. Leffingwell's observations of the problem, his advice on the solution, and his description of the resulting best practices come from experience: he's been there, done that, and has seen what's worked." -Grady Booch, IBM Fellow Agile development practices, while still controversial in some circles, offer undeniable benefits: faster time to market, better responsiveness to changing customer requirements, and higher quality. However, agile practices have been defined and recommended primarily to small teams. In Scaling Software Agility, Dean Leffingwell describes how agile methods can be applied to enterprise-class development. Part I provides an overview of the most common and effective agile methods. Part II describes seven best practices of agility that natively scale to the enterprise level. Part III describes an additional set of seven organizational capabilities that companies can master to achieve the full benefits of software agility on an enterprise scale. This book is invaluable to software developers, testers and QA personnel, managers and team leads, as well as to executives of software organizations whose objective is to increase the quality and productivity of the software development process but who are faced with all the challenges of developing software on an enterprise scale. Foreword Preface Acknowledgments About the Author Part I: Overview of Software Agility Chapter 1: Introduction to Agile Methods Chapter 2: Why the Waterfall Model Doesn't Work Chapter 3: The Essence of XP Chapter 4: The Essence of Scrum Chapter 5: The Essence of RUP Chapter 6: Lean Software, DSDM, and FDD Chapter 7: The Essence of Agile Chapter 8: The Challenge of Scaling Agile Part II: Seven Agile Team Practices That Scale Chapter 9: The Define/Build/Test Component Team Chapter 10: Two Levels of Planning and Tracking Chapter 11: Mastering the Iteration Chapter 12: Smaller, More Frequent Releases Chapter 13: Concurrent Testing Chapter 14: Continuous Integration Chapter 15: Regular Reflection and Adaptation Part III: Creating the Agile Enterprise Chapter 16: Intentional Architecture Chapter 17: Lean Requirements at Scale: Vision, Roadmap, and Just-in-Time Elaboration Chapter 18: Systems of Systems and the Agile Release Train Chapter 19: Managing Highly Distributed Development Chapter 20: Impact on Customers and Operations Chapter 21: Changing the Organization Chapter 22: Measuring Business Performance Conclusion: Agility Works at Scale Bibliography Index

    We are living in an age where data comes in abundance, and thanks to the self-learning algorithms from the field of machine learning, we can turn this data into knowledge. Automated speech recognition on our smart phones, web search engines, e-mail spam filters, the recommendation systems of our favorite movie streaming services – machine learning makes it all possible.Thanks to the many powerful open-source libraries that have been developed in recent years, machine learning is now right at our fingertips. Python provides the perfect environment to build machine learning systems productively.This book will teach you the fundamentals of machine learning and how to utilize these in real-world applications using Python. Step-by-step, you will expand your skill set with the best practices for transforming raw data into useful information, developing learning algorithms efficiently, and evaluating results.You will discover the different problem categories that machine learning can solve and explore how to classify objects, predict continuous outcomes with regression analysis, and find hidden structures in data via clustering. You will build your own machine learning system for sentiment analysis and finally, learn how to embed your model into a web app to share with the world

    In this insightful book, leading advocate Jeff Gothelf teaches you valuable Lean UX principles, tactics, and techniques from the ground up—how to rapidly experiment with design ideas, validate them with real users, and continually adjust your design based on what you learn.Inspired by Lean and Agile development theories, Lean UX lets you focus on the actual experience being designed, rather than deliverables. This book shows you how to collaborate closely with other members of the product team, and gather feedback early and often. You’ll learn how to drive the design in short, iterative cycles to assess what works best for the business and the user. Lean UX shows you how to make this change—for the better.Frame a vision of the problem you’re solving and focus your team on the right outcomesBring the designers’ toolkit to the rest of your product teamShare your insights with your team much earlier in the processCreate Minimum Viable Products to determine which ideas are validIncorporate the voice of the customer throughout the project cycleMake your team more productive: combine Lean UX with Agile’s Scrum frameworkUnderstand the organizational shifts necessary to integrate Lean UXLean UX received the 2013 Jolt Award from Dr. Dobb's Journal as the best book of the year. The publication's panel of judges chose five notable books, published during a 12-month period ending June 30, that every serious programmer should read.

    Through four years of groundbreaking research, Dr. Nicole Forsgren, Jez Humble, and Gene Kim set out to find a way to measure software delivery performance—and what drives it—using rigorous statistical methods. This book presents both the findings and the science behind that research. Readers will discover how to measure the performance of their teams, and what capabilities they should invest in to drive higher performance.

    Updated to cover Windows Server 2012, the fifth edition of this bestselling book gives you a thorough grounding in Microsoft's network directory service by explaining concepts in an easy-to-understand, narrative style.You'll negotiate a maze of technologies for deploying a scalable and reliable AD infrastructure, with new chapters on management tools, searching the AD database, authentication and security protocols, and Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS). This book provides real-world scenarios that let you apply what you've learned--ideal whether you're a network administrator for a small business or a multinational enterprise.Upgrade Active Directory to Windows Server 2012Learn the fundamentals, including how AD stores objectsUse the AD Administrative Center and other management toolsLearn to administer AD with Windows PowerShellSearch and gather AD data, using the LDAP query syntaxUnderstand how Group Policy functionsDesign a new Active Directory forestExamine the Kerberos security protocolGet a detailed look at the AD replication process

    Revised and updated for the Elixir 1.7, Elixir in Action, Second Edition teaches you how to apply Elixir to practical problems associated with scalability, fault tolerance, and high availability. Along the way, you'll develop an appreciation for, and considerable skill in, a functional and concurrent style of programming.

    The test is multiple choice and the other study guides take you through the 452 possible questions including all four answers for each question. But, three of the four answers are WRONG! You are reading 1,356 wrong answers and that is both confusing and frustrating. The Easy Way is a concise explanation of every question and answer focusing on the right answers. There are also hints and cheats help you remember the correct answer. Which would you rather study: right answers or over 250 pages with three-quarters of the answers wrong? Instructors: This book is perfect for review or weekend courses. Have the students read the narrative before class, then go over the concepts with them rather than slogging through all those wrong answers. You'll be done in no time and the students will be fully prepared to take their tests.

    By describing the overall characteristics of the architecture, these patterns not only guide designers and developers on how to design components, but also determine the ways in which those components should interact.This O’Reilly report takes a deep dive into many common software architecture patterns. Each pattern includes a full explanation of how it works, explains the pattern’s benefits and considerations, and describes the circumstances and conditions it was designed to address. The report also includes an analysis and scorecard for each pattern based on several architecture and software development quality attributes.Patterns include: - Layered architecture - Event-driven architecture - Microkernel architecture - Microservices architecture - Space-based architectureIn addition to these specific patterns, you’ll also learn about the Architecture by Implication anti-pattern and the causes and effects of not using architecture patterns.Mark Richards is an experienced software architect with significant experience and expertise in application, integration, and enterprise architecture. Active in the software industry since 1983, he is the author/presenter of several O’Reilly books and videos, including Software Architecture Fundamentals; Enterprise Messaging, Java Message Service, 2nd Edition; and 97 Things Every Software Architect Should Know.

    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 "

    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.