Program or Be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age


Douglas Rushkoff - 2010
    But for all the heat of claim and counter-claim, the argument is essentially beside the point: it’s here; it’s everywhere. The real question is, do we direct technology, or do we let ourselves be directed by it and those who have mastered it? “Choose the former,” writes Rushkoff, “and you gain access to the control panel of civilization. Choose the latter, and it could be the last real choice you get to make.” In ten chapters, composed of ten “commands” accompanied by original illustrations from comic artist Leland Purvis, Rushkoff provides cyberenthusiasts and technophobes alike with the guidelines to navigate this new universe.In this spirited, accessible poetics of new media, Rushkoff picks up where Marshall McLuhan left off, helping readers come to recognize programming as the new literacy of the digital age––and as a template through which to see beyond social conventions and power structures that have vexed us for centuries. This is a friendly little book with a big and actionable message. World-renowned media theorist and counterculture figure Douglas Rushkoff is the originator of ideas such as “viral media,” “social currency” and “screenagers.” He has been at the forefront of digital society from its beginning, correctly predicting the rise of the net, the dotcom boom and bust, as well as the current financial crisis. He is a familiar voice on NPR, face on PBS, and writer in publications from Discover Magazine to the New York Times.“Douglas Rushkoff is one of the great thinkers––and writers––of our time.” —Timothy Leary“Rushkoff is damn smart. As someone who understood the digital revolution faster and better than almost anyone, he shows how the internet is a social transformer that should change the way your business culture operates." —Walter Isaacson

Modern Operating Systems


Andrew S. Tanenbaum - 1992
    What makes an operating system modern? According to author Andrew Tanenbaum, it is the awareness of high-demand computer applications--primarily in the areas of multimedia, parallel and distributed computing, and security. The development of faster and more advanced hardware has driven progress in software, including enhancements to the operating system. It is one thing to run an old operating system on current hardware, and another to effectively leverage current hardware to best serve modern software applications. If you don't believe it, install Windows 3.0 on a modern PC and try surfing the Internet or burning a CD. Readers familiar with Tanenbaum's previous text, Operating Systems, know the author is a great proponent of simple design and hands-on experimentation. His earlier book came bundled with the source code for an operating system called Minux, a simple variant of Unix and the platform used by Linus Torvalds to develop Linux. Although this book does not come with any source code, he illustrates many of his points with code fragments (C, usually with Unix system calls). The first half of Modern Operating Systems focuses on traditional operating systems concepts: processes, deadlocks, memory management, I/O, and file systems. There is nothing groundbreaking in these early chapters, but all topics are well covered, each including sections on current research and a set of student problems. It is enlightening to read Tanenbaum's explanations of the design decisions made by past operating systems gurus, including his view that additional research on the problem of deadlocks is impractical except for "keeping otherwise unemployed graph theorists off the streets." It is the second half of the book that differentiates itself from older operating systems texts. Here, each chapter describes an element of what constitutes a modern operating system--awareness of multimedia applications, multiple processors, computer networks, and a high level of security. The chapter on multimedia functionality focuses on such features as handling massive files and providing video-on-demand. Included in the discussion on multiprocessor platforms are clustered computers and distributed computing. Finally, the importance of security is discussed--a lively enumeration of the scores of ways operating systems can be vulnerable to attack, from password security to computer viruses and Internet worms. Included at the end of the book are case studies of two popular operating systems: Unix/Linux and Windows 2000. There is a bias toward the Unix/Linux approach, not surprising given the author's experience and academic bent, but this bias does not detract from Tanenbaum's analysis. Both operating systems are dissected, describing how each implements processes, file systems, memory management, and other operating system fundamentals. Tanenbaum's mantra is simple, accessible operating system design. Given that modern operating systems have extensive features, he is forced to reconcile physical size with simplicity. Toward this end, he makes frequent references to the Frederick Brooks classic The Mythical Man-Month for wisdom on managing large, complex software development projects. He finds both Windows 2000 and Unix/Linux guilty of being too complicated--with a particular skewering of Windows 2000 and its "mammoth Win32 API." A primary culprit is the attempt to make operating systems more "user-friendly," which Tanenbaum views as an excuse for bloated code. The solution is to have smart people, the smallest possible team, and well-defined interactions between various operating systems components. Future operating system design will benefit if the advice in this book is taken to heart. --Pete Ostenson

Test-Driven Development: By Example


Kent Beck - 2002
    While some fear is healthy (often viewed as a conscience that tells programmers to be careful!), the author believes that byproducts of fear include tentative, grumpy, and uncommunicative programmers who are unable to absorb constructive criticism. When programming teams buy into TDD, they immediately see positive results. They eliminate the fear involved in their jobs, and are better equipped to tackle the difficult challenges that face them. TDD eliminates tentative traits, it teaches programmers to communicate, and it encourages team members to seek out criticism However, even the author admits that grumpiness must be worked out individually! In short, the premise behind TDD is that code should be continually tested and refactored. Kent Beck teaches programmers by example, so they can painlessly and dramatically increase the quality of their work.

The Passionate Programmer


Chad Fowler - 2009
    In this book, you'll learn how to become an entrepreneur, driving your career in the direction of your choosing. You'll learn how to build your software development career step by step, following the same path that you would follow if you were building, marketing, and selling a product. After all, your skills themselves are a product. The choices you make about which technologies to focus on and which business domains to master have at least as much impact on your success as your technical knowledge itself--don't let those choices be accidental. We'll walk through all aspects of the decision-making process, so you can ensure that you're investing your time and energy in the right areas. You'll develop a structured plan for keeping your mind engaged and your skills fresh. You'll learn how to assess your skills in terms of where they fit on the value chain, driving you away from commodity skills and toward those that are in high demand. Through a mix of high-level, thought-provoking essays and tactical "Act on It" sections, you will come away with concrete plans you can put into action immediately. You'll also get a chance to read the perspectives of several highly successful members of our industry from a variety of career paths. As with any product or service, if nobody knows what you're selling, nobody will buy. We'll walk through the often-neglected world of marketing, and you'll create a plan to market yourself both inside your company and to the industry in general. Above all, you'll see how you can set the direction of your career, leading to a more fulfilling and remarkable professional life.

Cracking the Coding Interview: 150 Programming Questions and Solutions


Gayle Laakmann McDowell - 2008
    This is a deeply technical book and focuses on the software engineering skills to ace your interview. The book is over 500 pages and includes 150 programming interview questions and answers, as well as other advice.The full list of topics are as follows:The Interview ProcessThis section offers an overview on questions are selected and how you will be evaluated. What happens when you get a question wrong? When should you start preparing, and how? What language should you use? All these questions and more are answered.Behind the ScenesLearn what happens behind the scenes during your interview, how decisions really get made, who you interview with, and what they ask you. Companies covered include Google, Amazon, Yahoo, Microsoft, Apple and Facebook.Special SituationsThis section explains the process for experience candidates, Program Managers, Dev Managers, Testers / SDETs, and more. Learn what your interviewers are looking for and how much code you need to know.Before the InterviewIn order to ace the interview, you first need to get an interview. This section describes what a software engineer's resume should look like and what you should be doing well before your interview.Behavioral PreparationAlthough most of a software engineering interview will be technical, behavioral questions matter too. This section covers how to prepare for behavioral questions and how to give strong, structured responses.Technical Questions (+ 5 Algorithm Approaches)This section covers how to prepare for technical questions (without wasting your time) and teaches actionable ways to solve the trickiest algorithm problems. It also teaches you what exactly "good coding" is when it comes to an interview.150 Programming Questions and AnswersThis section forms the bulk of the book. Each section opens with a discussion of the core knowledge and strategies to tackle this type of question, diving into exactly how you break down and solve it. Topics covered include• Arrays and Strings• Linked Lists• Stacks and Queues• Trees and Graphs• Bit Manipulation• Brain Teasers• Mathematics and Probability• Object-Oriented Design• Recursion and Dynamic Programming• Sorting and Searching• Scalability and Memory Limits• Testing• C and C++• Java• Databases• Threads and LocksFor the widest degree of readability, the solutions are almost entirely written with Java (with the exception of C / C++ questions). A link is provided with the book so that you can download, compile, and play with the solutions yourself.Changes from the Fourth Edition: The fifth edition includes over 200 pages of new content, bringing the book from 300 pages to over 500 pages. Major revisions were done to almost every solution, including a number of alternate solutions added. The introductory chapters were massively expanded, as were the opening of each of the chapters under Technical Questions. In addition, 24 new questions were added.Cracking the Coding Interview, Fifth Edition is the most expansive, detailed guide on how to ace your software development / programming interviews.

Mastering Vmware Vsphere 5


Scott Lowe - 2011
    You'll learn how to install, configure, operate, manage, and secure the latest release.Covers all the new features and capabilities of the much-anticipated new release of VMware vSphere Discusses the planning, installation, operation, and management for the latest release Reviews migration to the latest vSphere software Offers hands-on instruction and clear explanations with real-world examples Mastering VMware vSphere is the strategic guide you need to maximize the opportunities of virtualization.

Domain-Driven Design: Tackling Complexity in the Heart of Software


Eric Evans - 2003
    "His book is very compatible with XP. It is not about drawing pictures of a domain; it is about how you think of it, the language you use to talk about it, and how you organize your software to reflect your improving understanding of it. Eric thinks that learning about your problem domain is as likely to happen at the end of your project as at the beginning, and so refactoring is a big part of his technique. "The book is a fun read. Eric has lots of interesting stories, and he has a way with words. I see this book as essential reading for software developers--it is a future classic." --Ralph Johnson, author of Design Patterns "If you don't think you are getting value from your investment in object-oriented programming, this book will tell you what you've forgotten to do. "Eric Evans convincingly argues for the importance of domain modeling as the central focus of development and provides a solid framework and set of techniques for accomplishing it. This is timeless wisdom, and will hold up long after the methodologies du jour have gone out of fashion." --Dave Collins, author of Designing Object-Oriented User Interfaces "Eric weaves real-world experience modeling--and building--business applications into a practical, useful book. Written from the perspective of a trusted practitioner, Eric's descriptions of ubiquitous language, the benefits of sharing models with users, object life-cycle management, logical and physical application structuring, and the process and results of deep refactoring are major contributions to our field." --Luke Hohmann, author of Beyond Software Architecture "This book belongs on the shelf of every thoughtful software developer." --Kent Beck "What Eric has managed to capture is a part of the design process that experienced object designers have always used, but that we have been singularly unsuccessful as a group in conveying to the rest of the industry. We've given away bits and pieces of this knowledge...but we've never organized and systematized the principles of building domain logic. This book is important." --Kyle Brown, author of Enterprise Java(TM) Programming with IBM(R) WebSphere(R) The software development community widely acknowledges that domain modeling is central to software design. Through domain models, software developers are able to express rich functionality and translate it into a software implementation that truly serves the needs of its users. But despite its obvious importance, there are few practical resources that explain how to incorporate effective domain modeling into the software development process. Domain-Driven Design fills that need. This is not a book about specific technologies. It offers readers a systematic approach to domain-driven design, presenting an extensive set of design best practices, experience-based techniques, and fundamental principles that facilitate the development of software projects facing complex domains. Intertwining design and development practice, this book incorporates numerous examples based on actual projects to illustrate the application of domain-driven design to real-world software development. Readers learn how to use a domain model to make a complex development effort more focused and dynamic. A core of best practices and standard patterns provides a common language for the development team. A shift in emphasis--refactoring not just the code but the model underlying the code--in combination with the frequent iterations of Agile development leads to deeper insight into domains and enhanced communication between domain expert and programmer. Domain-Driven Design then builds on this foundation, and addresses modeling and design for complex systems and larger organizations.Specific topics covered include:Getting all team members to speak the same language Connecting model and implementation more deeply Sharpening key distinctions in a model Managing the lifecycle of a domain object Writing domain code that is safe to combine in elaborate ways Making complex code obvious and predictable Formulating a domain vision statement Distilling the core of a complex domain Digging out implicit concepts needed in the model Applying analysis patterns Relating design patterns to the model Maintaining model integrity in a large system Dealing with coexisting models on the same project Organizing systems with large-scale structures Recognizing and responding to modeling breakthroughs With this book in hand, object-oriented developers, system analysts, and designers will have the guidance they need to organize and focus their work, create rich and useful domain models, and leverage those models into quality, long-lasting software implementations.

A Tour of C++


Bjarne Stroustrup - 2013
    Bjarne Stroustrup, the designer and original implementer of C++, thoroughly covers the details of this language and its use in his definitive reference, The C++ Programming Language, Fourth Edition. In A Tour of C++ , Stroustrup excerpts the overview chapters from that complete reference, expanding and enhancing them to give an experienced programmer-in just a few hours-a clear idea of what constitutes modern C++. In this concise, self-contained guide, Stroustrup covers most major language features and the major standard-library components-not, of course, in great depth, but to a level that gives programmers a meaningful overview of the language, some key examples, and practical help in getting started. Stroustrup presents the C++ features in the context of the programming styles they support, such as object-oriented and generic programming. His tour is remarkably comprehensive. Coverage begins with the basics, then ranges widely through more advanced topics, including many that are new in C++11, such as move semantics, uniform initialization, lambda expressions, improved containers, random numbers, and concurrency. The tour ends with a discussion of the design and evolution of C++ and the extensions added for C++11. This guide does not aim to teach you how to program (see Stroustrup's Programming: Principles and Practice Using C++ for that); nor will it be the only resource you'll need for C++ mastery (see Stroustrup's The C++ Programming Language, Fourth Edition, for that). If, however, you are a C or C++ programmer wanting greater familiarity with the current C++ language, or a programmer versed in another language wishing to gain an accurate picture of the nature and benefits of modern C++, you can't find a shorter or simpler introduction than this tour provides.

Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs


Harold Abelson - 1984
    This long-awaited revision contains changes throughout the text. There are new implementations of most of the major programming systems in the book, including the interpreters and compilers, and the authors have incorporated many small changes that reflect their experience teaching the course at MIT since the first edition was published. A new theme has been introduced that emphasizes the central role played by different approaches to dealing with time in computational models: objects with state, concurrent programming, functional programming and lazy evaluation, and nondeterministic programming. There are new example sections on higher-order procedures in graphics and on applications of stream processing in numerical programming, and many new exercises. In addition, all the programs have been reworked to run in any Scheme implementation that adheres to the IEEE standard.

The Design of the UNIX Operating System


Maurice J. Bach - 1986
    The leading selling UNIX internals book on the market.

Everything You Need to Ace Computer Science and Coding in One Big Fat Notebook: The Complete Middle School Study Guide


Grant Smith - 2020
    Now introducing Everything You Need to Ace Computer Science and Coding , an essential new title with the potential to run hand-in-hand with—or even outrun—Math (over 1.3 million copies in print) and Science (925,000 copies in print) as the next critical STEM companion.            Instruction is presented in the simple but powerful format of the previous Big Fat Notebooks . The key concepts of coding and computer science easily digested and summarized, with critical ideas clearly explained, doodles that illuminate tricky concepts, and quizzes to recap it all. Kids will explore the concepts of computer science, learn how websites are designed and created, and understand the fundamentals of coding with Scratch, Python, HTML, and CSS.  Written by Grant Smith, a computer science education expert—and vetted by an award-winning computer-science teacher—this  Big Fat Notebook  is for every student who is either taking computer science in school or is a passionate code warrior.

Understanding and Using C Pointers


Richard Reese - 2013
    With this practical book, you’ll learn how pointers provide the mechanism to dynamically manipulate memory, enhance support for data structures, and enable access to hardware. Author Richard Reese shows you how to use pointers with arrays, strings, structures, and functions, using memory models throughout the book.Difficult to master, pointers provide C with much flexibility and power—yet few resources are dedicated to this data type. This comprehensive book has the information you need, whether you’re a beginner or an experienced C or C++ programmer or developer.Get an introduction to pointers, including the declaration of different pointer typesLearn about dynamic memory allocation, de-allocation, and alternative memory management techniquesUse techniques for passing or returning data to and from functionsUnderstand the fundamental aspects of arrays as they relate to pointersExplore the basics of strings and how pointers are used to support themExamine why pointers can be the source of security problems, such as buffer overflowLearn several pointer techniques, such as the use of opaque pointers, bounded pointers and, the restrict keyword

The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering


Frederick P. Brooks Jr. - 1975
    With a blend of software engineering facts and thought-provoking opinions, Fred Brooks offers insight for anyone managing complex projects. These essays draw from his experience as project manager for the IBM System/360 computer family and then for OS/360, its massive software system. Now, 45 years after the initial publication of his book, Brooks has revisited his original ideas and added new thoughts and advice, both for readers already familiar with his work and for readers discovering it for the first time.The added chapters contain (1) a crisp condensation of all the propositions asserted in the original book, including Brooks' central argument in The Mythical Man-Month: that large programming projects suffer management problems different from small ones due to the division of labor; that the conceptual integrity of the product is therefore critical; and that it is difficult but possible to achieve this unity; (2) Brooks' view of these propositions a generation later; (3) a reprint of his classic 1986 paper "No Silver Bullet"; and (4) today's thoughts on the 1986 assertion, "There will be no silver bullet within ten years."

Introducing Windows Azure for IT Professionals


Mitch Tulloch - 2013
    It is offered for sale in print format as a convenience.Get a head start evaluating Windows Azure - with technical insights from a Microsoft MVP Mitch Tulloch. This guide introduces the latest features and capabilities, with scenario-based advice on how the platform can meet the needs of your business. Get the high-level overview you need to begin preparing your deployment now.Topics include: Understanding Windows Azure Windows Azure Compute Services Windows Azure Network Services Windows Azure Data Services Windows Azure App Services Getting Started with Windows Azure

Introduction to Algorithms


Thomas H. Cormen - 1989
    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.