By presenting actual experiences and analyzing them as they are described, the author conveys the developmental thought processes employed and shows a style of thinking that leads to successful results is something that can be learned. Along with spectacular successes, the author also conveys how failures contributed to shaping the thought processes. Provides the reader with a style of thinking that will enhance a person's ability to function as a problem-solver of complex technical issues. Consists of a collection of stories about the author's participation in significant discoveries, relating how those discoveries came about and, most importantly, provides analysis about the thought processes and reasoning that took place as the author and his associates progressed through engineering problems.

    Git tasks displayed on two-page spreads provide all the context you need, without the extra fluff. Get up to speed on Git right now with Pragmatic Guide to Git. Task-oriented two-page spreads get you up and running with minimal fuss. Each left-hand page dives into the underlying implementation for each task. The right-hand page contains commands that focus on the task at hand, and cross references to other tasks that are related. You'll find what you need fast. Git is rapidly becoming the de-facto standard for the open source community. Its excellent merging capabilities, coupled with its speed and relative ease of use, make it an indispensable tool for any developer. New Git users will learn the basic tasks needed to work with Git every day, including working with remote repositories, dealing with branches and tags, exploring the history, and fixing problems when things go wrong. If you're already familiar with Git, this book will be your go-to reference for Git commands and best practices. You won't find a more practical approach to learning Git than Pragmatic Guide to Git.

    In this book, you’ll learn how many of the most fundamental data science tools and algorithms work by implementing them from scratch. If you have an aptitude for mathematics and some programming skills, author Joel Grus will help you get comfortable with the math and statistics at the core of data science, and with hacking skills you need to get started as a data scientist. Today’s messy glut of data holds answers to questions no one’s even thought to ask. This book provides you with the know-how to dig those answers out. Get a crash course in Python Learn the basics of linear algebra, statistics, and probability—and understand how and when they're used in data science Collect, explore, clean, munge, and manipulate data Dive into the fundamentals of machine learning Implement models such as k-nearest Neighbors, Naive Bayes, linear and logistic regression, decision trees, neural networks, and clustering Explore recommender systems, natural language processing, network analysis, MapReduce, and databases

    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.

    Just set aside one hour a day—lunchtime would be perfect—for a month, and you'll be automating Windows tasks faster than you ever thought possible. You'll start with the basics—what is PowerShell and what can you do with it. Then, you'll move systematically through the techniques and features you'll use to make your job easier and your day shorter. This totally revised second edition covers new PowerShell 3 features designed for Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012.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 PowerShell from the beginning—no experience required! Covers PowerShell 3, Windows 8, and Windows Server 2012 Each lesson should take you one hour or lessAbout the TechnologyPowerShell is both a language and an administrative shell with which you can control and automate nearly every aspect of Windows. It accepts and executes commands immediately, and you can write scripts to manage most Windows servers like Exchange, IIS, and SharePoint.Experience with Windows administration is helpful. No programming experience is assumed.Table of ContentsBefore you begin Meet PowerShell Using the help system Running commands Working with providers The pipeline: connecting commands Adding commands Objects: data by another name The pipeline, deeper Formatting—and why it's done on the right Filtering and comparisons A practical interlude Remote control: one to one, and one to many Using Windows Management Instrumentation Multitasking with background jobs Working with many objects, one at a time Security alert! Variables: a place to store your stuff Input and output Sessions: remote control with less work You call this scripting? Improving your parameterized script Advanced remoting configuration Using regular expressions to parse text files Additional random tips, tricks, and techniques Using someone else's script Never the end PowerShell cheat sheet

    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

    What they don't realize—and what Daniel Hillis's short book brilliantly demonstrates—is that computers' seemingly complex operations can be broken down into a few simple parts that perform the same simple procedures over and over again.Computer wizard Hillis offers an easy-to-follow explanation of how data is processed that makes the operations of a computer seem as straightforward as those of a bicycle. Avoiding technobabble or discussions of advanced hardware, the lucid explanations and colorful anecdotes in The Pattern on the Stone go straight to the heart of what computers really do.Hillis proceeds from an outline of basic logic to clear descriptions of programming languages, algorithms, and memory. He then takes readers in simple steps up to the most exciting developments in computing today—quantum computing, parallel computing, neural networks, and self-organizing systems.Written clearly and succinctly by one of the world's leading computer scientists, The Pattern on the Stone is an indispensable guide to understanding the workings of that most ubiquitous and important of machines: the computer.

    Difficult issues need to be figured out, such as scalability, consistency, reliability, efficiency, and maintainability. In addition, we have an overwhelming variety of tools, including relational databases, NoSQL datastores, stream or batch processors, and message brokers. What are the right choices for your application? How do you make sense of all these buzzwords?In this practical and comprehensive guide, author Martin Kleppmann helps you navigate this diverse landscape by examining the pros and cons of various technologies for processing and storing data. Software keeps changing, but the fundamental principles remain the same. With this book, software engineers and architects will learn how to apply those ideas in practice, and how to make full use of data in modern applications. Peer under the hood of the systems you already use, and learn how to use and operate them more effectively Make informed decisions by identifying the strengths and weaknesses of different tools Navigate the trade-offs around consistency, scalability, fault tolerance, and complexity Understand the distributed systems research upon which modern databases are built Peek behind the scenes of major online services, and learn from their architectures

    The widespread adoption of agile methods has brought the need for effective testing into the limelight, and agile projects have transformed the role of testers. Much of a tester's function, however, remains largely misunderstood. What is the true role of a tester? Do agile teams actually need members with QA backgrounds? What does it really mean to be an "agile tester?"Two of the industry's most experienced agile testing practitioners and consultants, Lisa Crispin and Janet Gregory, have teamed up to bring you the definitive answers to these questions and many others. In Agile Testing, Crispin and Gregory define agile testing and illustrate the tester's role with examples from real agile teams. They teach you how to use the agile testing quadrants to identify what testing is needed, who should do it, and what tools might help. The book chronicles an agile software development iteration from the viewpoint of a tester and explains the seven key success factors of agile testing.Readers will come away from this book understanding- How to get testers engaged in agile development- Where testers and QA managers fit on an agile team- What to look for when hiring an agile tester- How to transition from a traditional cycle to agile development- How to complete testing activities in short iterations- How to use tests to successfully guide development- How to overcome barriers to test automationThis book is a must for agile testers, agile teams, their managers, and their customers.

    Hundreds of thousands of Python developers around the world rely on Python for general-purpose tasks, Internet scripting, systems programming, user interfaces, and product customization. Available on all major computing platforms, including commercial versions of Unix, Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X, Python is portable, powerful and remarkable easy to use.With its convenient, quick-reference format, "Python Pocket Reference," 3rd Edition is the perfect on-the-job reference. More importantly, it's now been refreshed to cover the language's latest release, Python 2.4. For experienced Python developers, this book is a compact toolbox that delivers need-to-know information at the flip of a page. This third edition also includes an easy-lookup index to help developers find answers fast!Python 2.4 is more than just optimization and library enhancements; it's also chock full of bug fixes and upgrades. And these changes are addressed in the "Python Pocket Reference," 3rd Edition. New language features, new and upgraded built-ins, and new and upgraded modules and packages--they're all clarified in detail.The "Python Pocket Reference," 3rd Edition serves as the perfect companion to "Learning Python" and "Programming Python."

    The authors present updated coverage of compilers based on research and techniques that have been developed in the field over the past few years. The book provides a thorough introduction to compiler design and covers topics such as context-free grammars, fine state machines, and syntax-directed translation.

    This is one of those cases. The UNIX System Administration Handbook is one of the few books we ever measured ourselves against." -From the Foreword by Tim O'Reilly, founder of O'Reilly Media "This book is fun and functional as a desktop reference. If you use UNIX and Linux systems, you need this book in your short-reach library. It covers a bit of the systems' history but doesn't bloviate. It's just straightfoward information delivered in colorful and memorable fashion." -Jason A. Nunnelley"This is a comprehensive guide to the care and feeding of UNIX and Linux systems. The authors present the facts along with seasoned advice and real-world examples. Their perspective on the variations among systems is valuable for anyone who runs a heterogeneous computing facility." -Pat Parseghian The twentieth anniversary edition of the world's best-selling UNIX system administration book has been made even better by adding coverage of the leading Linux distributions: Ubuntu, openSUSE, and RHEL. This book approaches system administration in a practical way and is an invaluable reference for both new administrators and experienced professionals. It details best practices for every facet of system administration, including storage management, network design and administration, email, web hosting, scripting, software configuration management, performance analysis, Windows interoperability, virtualization, DNS, security, management of IT service organizations, and much more. UNIX(R) and Linux(R) System Administration Handbook, Fourth Edition, reflects the current versions of these operating systems: Ubuntu(R) LinuxopenSUSE(R) LinuxRed Hat(R) Enterprise Linux(R)Oracle America(R) Solaris(TM) (formerly Sun Solaris)HP HP-UX(R)IBM AIX(R)

    It's a beautifully written tutorial that begins with the basic steps to get your first Ruby program up and running and goes on to explore sophisticated topics like callable objects, reflection, and threading. Whether the topic is simple or tough, the book's easy-to-follow examples and explanations will give you immediate confidence as you build your Ruby programming skills.The Well-Grounded Rubyist is a thoroughly revised and updated edition of the best-selling Ruby for Rails. In this new book, expert author David A. Black moves beyond Rails and presents a broader view of Ruby. It covers Ruby 1.9, and keeps the same sharp focus and clear writing that made Ruby for Rails stand out.Starting with the basics, The Well-Grounded Rubyist explains Ruby objects and their interactions from the ground up. In the middle chapters, the book turns to an examination of Ruby's built-in, core classes, showing the reader how to manipulate strings, numbers, arrays, ranges, hashes, sets, and more. Regular expressions get attention, as do file and other I/O operations.Along the way, the reader is introduced to numerous tools included in the standard Ruby distribution--tools like the task manager Rake and the interactive Ruby console-based interpreter Irb--that facilitate Ruby development and make it an integrated and pleasant experience.The book encompasses advanced topics, like the design of Ruby's class and module system, and the use of Ruby threads, taking even the new Rubyist deep into the language and giving every reader the foundations necessary to use, explore, and enjoy this unusually popular and versatile language.It's no wonder one reader commented: "The technical depth is just right to not distract beginners, yet detailed enough for more advanced readers."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.

    Often, computer science and computer engineering curricula don't provide students with a concentrated and consistent introduction to the fundamental concepts that underlie all computer systems. Traditional computer organization and logic design courses cover some of this material, but they focus largely on hardware design. They provide students with little or no understanding of how important software components operate, how application programs use systems, or how system attributes affect the performance and correctness of application programs. - A more complete view of systems - Takes a broader view of systems than traditional computer organization books, covering aspects of computer design, operating systems, compilers, and networking, provides students with the understanding of how programs run on real systems. - Systems presented from a programmers perspective - Material is presented in such a way that it has clear benefit to application programmers, students learn how to use this knowledge to improve program performance and reliability. They also become more effective in program debugging, because t

    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.