In User Stories Applied, Mike Cohn provides you with a front-to-back blueprint for writing these user stories and weaving them into your development lifecycle.You'll learn what makes a great user story, and what makes a bad one. You'll discover practical ways to gather user stories, even when you can't speak with your users. Then, once you've compiled your user stories, Cohn shows how to organize them, prioritize them, and use them for planning, management, and testing.User role modeling: understanding what users have in common, and where they differ Gathering stories: user interviewing, questionnaires, observation, and workshops Working with managers, trainers, salespeople and other proxies Writing user stories for acceptance testing Using stories to prioritize, set schedules, and estimate release costs Includes end-of-chapter practice questions and exercises User Stories Applied will be invaluable to every software developer, tester, analyst, and manager working with any agile method: XP, Scrum... or even your own home-grown approach.

    The book focuses on using SQL to find the story your data tells, with the popular open-source database PostgreSQL and the pgAdmin interface as its primary tools.You'll first cover the fundamentals of databases and the SQL language, then build skills by analyzing data from the U.S. Census and other federal and state government agencies. With exercises and real-world examples in each chapter, this book will teach even those who have never programmed before all the tools necessary to build powerful databases and access information quickly and efficiently.You'll learn how to: •Create databases and related tables using your own data •Define the right data types for your information •Aggregate, sort, and filter data to find patterns •Use basic math and advanced statistical functions •Identify errors in data and clean them up •Import and export data using delimited text files •Write queries for geographic information systems (GIS) •Create advanced queries and automate tasks Learning SQL doesn't have to be dry and complicated. Practical SQL delivers clear examples with an easy-to-follow approach to teach you the tools you need to build and manage your own databases. This book uses PostgreSQL, but the SQL syntax is applicable to many database applications, including Microsoft SQL Server and MySQL.

    Unlike other introductory books, it focuses on the program design process. This approach fosters a variety of skills--critical reading, analytical thinking, creative synthesis, and attention to detail--that are important for everyone, not just future computer programmers. The book exposes readers to two fundamentally new ideas. First, it presents program design guidelines that show the reader how to analyze a problem statement; how to formulate concise goals; how to make up examples; how to develop an outline of the solution, based on the analysis; how to finish the program; and how to test. Each step produces a well-defined intermediate product. Second, the book comes with a novel programming environment, the first one explicitly designed for beginners. The environment grows with the readers as they master the material in the book until it supports a full-fledged language for the whole spectrum of programming tasks.All the book's support materials are available for free on the Web. The Web site includes the environment, teacher guides, exercises for all levels, solutions, and additional projects.A second edition is now available.

    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!

    That was before one pioneering work documented the underground computer revolution that was about to change our world forever. With groundbreaking profiles of Bill Gates, Steve Wozniak, MIT's Tech Model Railroad Club, and more, Steven Levy's Hackers brilliantly captured a seminal moment when the risk-takers and explorers were poised to conquer twentieth-century America's last great frontier. And in the Internet age, the hacker ethic-first espoused here-is alive and well.

    And in a perfect world, those who produce the best code are the most successful. But in our perfectly messy world, success also depends on how you work with people to get your job done.In this highly entertaining book, Brian Fitzpatrick and Ben Collins-Sussman cover basic patterns and anti-patterns for working with other people, teams, and users while trying to develop software. It's valuable information from two respected software engineers whose popular video series, "Working with Poisonous People," has attracted hundreds of thousands of viewers.You'll learn how to deal with imperfect people--those irrational and unpredictable beings--in the course of your work. And you'll discover why playing well with others is at least as important as having great technical skills. By internalizing the techniques in this book, you'll get more software written, be more influential, be happier in your career.

    If you use Python, even as a beginner, this book will teach you practical ways to build your own machine learning solutions. With all the data available today, machine learning applications are limited only by your imagination.You'll learn the steps necessary to create a successful machine-learning application with Python and the scikit-learn library. Authors Andreas Muller and Sarah Guido focus on the practical aspects of using machine learning algorithms, rather than the math behind them. Familiarity with the NumPy and matplotlib libraries will help you get even more from this book.With this book, you'll learn:Fundamental concepts and applications of machine learningAdvantages and shortcomings of widely used machine learning algorithmsHow to represent data processed by machine learning, including which data aspects to focus onAdvanced methods for model evaluation and parameter tuningThe concept of pipelines for chaining models and encapsulating your workflowMethods for working with text data, including text-specific processing techniquesSuggestions for improving your machine learning and data science skills

    With the many upgraded features, C# is more expressive than ever. However, an in depth understanding is required to get the most out of the language.C# in Depth, Second Edition is a thoroughly revised, up-to-date book that covers the new features of C# 4 as well as Code Contracts. In it, you'll see the subtleties of C# programming in action, learning how to work with high-value features that you'll be glad to have in your toolkit. The book helps readers avoid hidden pitfalls of C# programming by understanding "behind the scenes" issues.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.

    Legendary testing expert James Whittaker, until recently a Google testing leader, and two top Google experts reveal exactly how Google tests software, offering brand-new best practices you can use even if you're not quite Google's size...yet! Breakthrough Techniques You Can Actually Use Discover 100% practical, amazingly scalable techniques for analyzing risk and planning tests...thinking like real users...implementing exploratory, black box, white box, and acceptance testing...getting usable feedback...tracking issues...choosing and creating tools...testing "Docs & Mocks," interfaces, classes, modules, libraries, binaries, services, and infrastructure...reviewing code and refactoring...using test hooks, presubmit scripts, queues, continuous builds, and more. With these techniques, you can transform testing from a bottleneck into an accelerator-and make your whole organization more productive!

    With this book, you'll get a candid and insightful look at how software is constructed and maintained by some of the world's leading practitioners.Titus Winters, Tom Manshreck, and Hyrum K. Wright, software engineers and a technical writer at Google, reframe how software engineering is practiced and taught: from an emphasis on programming to an emphasis on software engineering, which roughly translates to programming over time.You'll learn:Fundamental differences between software engineering and programmingHow an organization effectively manages a living codebase and efficiently responds to inevitable changeWhy culture (and recognizing it) is important, and how processes, practices, and tools come into play

    Database performance has become a major headache, and most IT departments believe that developers should provide simple SQL code to solve immediate problems and let DBAs tune any bad SQL later.In The Art of SQL, author and SQL expert Stephane Faroult argues that this safe approach only leads to disaster. His insightful book, named after Art of War by Sun Tzu, contends that writing quick inefficient code is sweeping the dirt under the rug. SQL code may run for 5 to 10 years, surviving several major releases of the database management system and on several generations of hardware. The code must be fast and sound from the start, and that requires a firm understanding of SQL and relational theory.The Art of SQL offers best practices that teach experienced SQL users to focus on strategy rather than specifics. Faroult's approach takes a page from Sun Tzu's classic treatise by viewing database design as a military campaign. You need knowledge, skills, and talent. Talent can't be taught, but every strategist from Sun Tzu to modern-day generals believed that it can be nurtured through the experience of others. They passed on their experience acquired in the field through basic principles that served as guiding stars amid the sound and fury of battle. This is what Faroult does with SQL.Like a successful battle plan, good architectural choices are based on contingencies. What if the volume of this or that table increases unexpectedly? What if, following a merger, the number of users doubles? What if you want to keep several years of data online? Faroult's way of looking at SQL performance may be unconventional and unique, but he's deadly serious about writing good SQL and using SQL well. The Art of SQL is not a cookbook, listing problems and giving recipes. The aim is to get you-and your manager-to raise good questions.

    This makes the book random-access: Items are easy to browse and study in whatever order the reader needs. I will be recommending "Effective Python" to students as an admirably compact source of mainstream advice on a very broad range of topics for the intermediate Python programmer. " Brandon Rhodes, software engineer at Dropbox and chair of PyCon 2016-2017" It s easy to start coding with Python, which is why the language is so popular. However, Python s unique strengths, charms, and expressiveness can be hard to grasp, and there are hidden pitfalls that can easily trip you up. " Effective Python " will help you master a truly Pythonic approach to programming, harnessing Python s full power to write exceptionally robust and well-performing code. Using the concise, scenario-driven style pioneered in Scott Meyers best-selling "Effective C++, " Brett Slatkin brings together 59 Python best practices, tips, and shortcuts, and explains them with realistic code examples. Drawing on years of experience building Python infrastructure at Google, Slatkin uncovers little-known quirks and idioms that powerfully impact code behavior and performance. You ll learn the best way to accomplish key tasks, so you can write code that s easier to understand, maintain, and improve. Key features includeActionable guidelines for all major areas of Python 3.x and 2.x development, with detailed explanations and examples Best practices for writing functions that clarify intention, promote reuse, and avoid bugs Coverage of how to accurately express behaviors with classes and objects Guidance on how to avoid pitfalls with metaclasses and dynamic attributes More efficient approaches to concurrency and parallelism Better techniques and idioms for using Python s built-in modules Tools and best practices for collaborative development Solutions for debugging, testing, and optimization in order to improve quality and performance "

    It contains sample programs to illustrate practical solutions to the type of real-world problems professional developers encounter.

    Rich Stevens describes more than 200 system calls and functions; since he believes the best way to learn code is to read code, a brief example accompanies each description.Building upon information presented in the first 15 chapters, the author offers chapter-long examples teaching you how to create a database library, a PostScript printer driver, a modem dialer, and a program that runs other programs under a pseudo terminal. To make your analysis and understanding of this code even easier, and to allow you to modify it, all of the code in the book is available via UUNET.A 20-page appendix provides detailed function prototypes for all the UNIX, POSIX, and ANSI C functions that are described in the book, and lists the page on which each prototype function is described in detail. Additional tables throughout the text and a thorough index make Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment an invaluable reference tool that all UNIX programmers - beginners to experts - w

    Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) is the recommended technology for creating Windows user interfaces, giving you the power to create richer and more compelling applications than you dreamed possible. Whether you want to develop traditional user interfaces or integrate 3D graphics, audio/video, animation, dynamic skinning, multi-touch, rich document support, speech recognition, or more, WPF enables you to do so in a seamless, resolution-independent manner. WPF 4 Unleashed is the authoritative book that covers it all, in a practical and approachable fashion, authored by WPF guru and Microsoft developer Adam Nathan. Covers everything you need to know about Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML) Examines the WPF feature areas in incredible depth: controls, layout, resources, data binding, styling, graphics, animation, and more Highlights the latest features, such as multi-touch, text rendering improvements, XAML language enhancements, new controls, the Visual State Manager, easing functions, and much more Delves into topics that aren't covered by most books: 3D, speech, audio/video, documents, effects Shows how to create popular UI elements, such as Galleries, ScreenTips, and more Demonstrates how to create sophisticated UI mechanisms, such as Visual Studio-like collapsible/dockable panes Explains how to create first-class custom controls for WPF Demonstrates how to create hybrid WPF software that leverages Windows Forms, DirectX, ActiveX, or other non-WPF technologies Explains how to exploit new Windows 7 features, such as Jump Lists and taskbar customizations