Design for Hackers


David Kadavy - 2011
    The term 'hacker' has been redefined to consist of anyone who has an insatiable curiosity as to how things work--and how they can try to make them better. This book is aimed at hackers of all skill levels and explains the classical principles and techniques behind beautiful designs by deconstructing those designs in order to understand what makes them so remarkable. Author and designer David Kadavy provides you with the framework for understanding good design and places a special emphasis on interactive mediums. You'll explore color theory, the role of proportion and geometry in design, and the relationship between medium and form. Packed with unique reverse engineering design examples, this book inspires and encourages you to discover and create new beauty in a variety of formats. Breaks down and studies the classical principles and techniques behind the creation of beautiful design. Illustrates cultural and contextual considerations in communicating to a specific audience. Discusses why design is important, the purpose of design, the various constraints of design, and how today's fonts are designed with the screen in mind. Dissects the elements of color, size, scale, proportion, medium, and form. Features a unique range of examples, including the graffiti in the ancient city of Pompeii, the lack of the color black in Monet's art, the style and sleekness of the iPhone, and more.By the end of this book, you'll be able to apply the featured design principles to your own web designs, mobile apps, or other digital work.

Test-Driven JavaScript Development


Christian Johansen - 2010
     Test-Driven JavaScript Development is a complete, best-practice guide to agile JavaScript testing and quality assurance with the test-driven development (TDD) methodology. Leading agile JavaScript developer Christian Johansen covers all aspects of applying state-of-the-art automated testing in JavaScript environments, walking readers through the entire development lifecycle, from project launch to application deployment, and beyond.Using real-life examples driven by unit tests, Johansen shows how to use TDD to gain greater confidence in your code base, so you can fearlessly refactor and build more robust, maintainable, and reliable JavaScript code at lower cost. Throughout, he addresses crucial issues ranging from code design to performance optimization, offering realistic solutions for developers, QA specialists, and testers.Coverage includes - Understanding automated testing and TDD - Building effective automated testing workflows - Testing code for both browsers and servers (using Node.js) - Using TDD to build cleaner APIs, better modularized code, and more robust software - Writing testable code - Using test stubs and mocks to test units in isolation - Continuously improving code through refactoring - Walking through the construction and automated testing of fully functional softwareThe accompanying Web site, tddjs.com, contains all of the book's code listings and additional resources.

High Performance Browser Networking


Ilya Grigorik - 2013
    By understanding what the browser can and cannot do, you’ll be able to make better design decisions and deliver faster web applications to your users.Author Ilya Grigorik—a developer advocate and web performance engineer at Google—starts with the building blocks of TCP and UDP, and then dives into newer technologies such as HTTP 2.0, WebSockets, and WebRTC. This book explains the benefits of these technologies and helps you determine which ones to use for your next application.- Learn how TCP affects the performance of HTTP- Understand why mobile networks are slower than wired networks- Use best practices to address performance bottlenecks in HTTP- Discover how HTTP 2.0 (based on SPDY) will improve networking- Learn how to use Server Sent Events (SSE) for push updates, and WebSockets for XMPP chat- Explore WebRTC for browser-to-browser applications such as P2P video chat- Examine the architecture of a simple app that uses HTTP 2.0, SSE, WebSockets, and WebRTC

MongoDB: The Definitive Guide


Kristina Chodorow - 2010
    Learn how easy it is to handle data as self-contained JSON-style documents, rather than as records in a relational database.Explore ways that document-oriented storage will work for your projectLearn how MongoDB’s schema-free data model handles documents, collections, and multiple databasesExecute basic write operations, and create complex queries to find data with any criteriaUse indexes, aggregation tools, and other advanced query techniquesLearn about monitoring, security and authentication, backup and repair, and moreSet up master-slave and automatic failover replication in MongoDBUse sharding to scale MongoDB horizontally, and learn how it impacts applicationsGet example applications written in Java, PHP, Python, and Ruby

Camel in Action


Claus Ibsen - 2010
    It starts with core concepts like sending, receiving, routing, and transforming data and then shows readers the entire lifecycle. The book goes in depth on how to test, deal with errors, scale, deploy, and monitor apps and even how to build custom tooling. Written by core developers of Camel and the authors of the first edition, this book distills their experience and practical insights so that readers can tackle integration tasks like a pro.Purchase of the print book includes a free eBook in PDF, Kindle, and ePub formats from Manning Publications.

Algorithms in a Nutshell


George T. Heineman - 2008
    Algorithms in a Nutshell describes a large number of existing algorithms for solving a variety of problems, and helps you select and implement the right algorithm for your needs -- with just enough math to let you understand and analyze algorithm performance. With its focus on application, rather than theory, this book provides efficient code solutions in several programming languages that you can easily adapt to a specific project. Each major algorithm is presented in the style of a design pattern that includes information to help you understand why and when the algorithm is appropriate. With this book, you will:Solve a particular coding problem or improve on the performance of an existing solutionQuickly locate algorithms that relate to the problems you want to solve, and determine why a particular algorithm is the right one to useGet algorithmic solutions in C, C++, Java, and Ruby with implementation tipsLearn the expected performance of an algorithm, and the conditions it needs to perform at its bestDiscover the impact that similar design decisions have on different algorithmsLearn advanced data structures to improve the efficiency of algorithmsWith Algorithms in a Nutshell, you'll learn how to improve the performance of key algorithms essential for the success of your software applications.

An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management


Will Larson - 2019
    Management is a key part of any organization, yet the discipline is often self-taught and unstructured. Getting to the good solutions of complex management challenges can make the difference between fulfillment and frustration for teams, and, ultimately, the success or failure of companies. Will Larson's An Elegant Puzzle orients around the particular challenges of engineering management--from sizing teams to technical debt to succession planning--and provides a path to the good solutions. Drawing from his experience at Digg, Uber, and Stripe, Will Larson has developed a thoughtful approach to engineering management that leaders of all levels at companies of all sizes can apply. An Elegant Puzzle balances structured principles and human-centric thinking to help any leader create more effective and rewarding organizations for engineers to thrive in.

Write Great Code: Volume 1: Understanding the Machine


Randall Hyde - 2004
    A dirty little secret assembly language programmers rarely admit to, however, is that what you really need to learn is machine organization, not assembly language programming. Write Great Code Vol I, the first in a series from assembly language expert Randall Hyde, dives right into machine organization without the extra overhead of learning assembly language programming at the same time. And since Write Great Code Vol I concentrates on the machine organization, not assembly language, the reader will learn in greater depth those subjects that are language-independent and of concern to a high level language programmer. Write Great Code Vol I will help programmers make wiser choices with respect to programming statements and data types when writing software, no matter which language they use.

The Manager's Path: A Guide for Tech Leaders Navigating Growth and Change


Camille Fournier - 2017
    Tech companies in general lack the experience, tools, texts, and frameworks to do it well. And the handful of books that share tips and tricks of engineering management don t explain how to supervise employees in the face of growth and change.In this book, author Camille Fournier takes you through the stages of technical management, from mentoring interns to working with the senior staff. You ll get actionable advice for approaching various obstacles in your path, whether you re a new manager, a mentor, or a more experienced leader looking for fresh advice. Pick up this book and learn how to become a better manager and leader in your organization. * Discover how to manage small teams and large/multi-level teams * Understand how to build and bootstrap a unifying culture in teams * Deal with people problems and learn how to mentor other managers and new leaders * Learn how to manage yourself: avoid common pitfalls that challenge many leaders * Obtain several practices that you can incorporate and practice along the way

High Performance Web Sites


Steve Souders - 2007
    Author Steve Souders, in his job as Chief Performance Yahoo!, collected these best practices while optimizing some of the most-visited pages on the Web. Even sites that had already been highly optimized, such as Yahoo! Search and the Yahoo! Front Page, were able to benefit from these surprisingly simple performance guidelines.The rules in High Performance Web Sites explain how you can optimize the performance of the Ajax, CSS, JavaScript, Flash, and images that you've already built into your site -- adjustments that are critical for any rich web application. Other sources of information pay a lot of attention to tuning web servers, databases, and hardware, but the bulk of display time is taken up on the browser side and by the communication between server and browser. High Performance Web Sites covers every aspect of that process.Each performance rule is supported by specific examples, and code snippets are available on the book's companion web site. The rules include how to: Make Fewer HTTP RequestsUse a Content Delivery NetworkAdd an Expires HeaderGzip ComponentsPut Stylesheets at the TopPut Scripts at the BottomAvoid CSS ExpressionsMake JavaScript and CSS ExternalReduce DNS LookupsMinify JavaScriptAvoid RedirectsRemove Duplicates ScriptsConfigure ETagsMake Ajax CacheableIf you're building pages for high traffic destinations and want to optimize the experience of users visiting your site, this book is indispensable.If everyone would implement just 20% of Steve's guidelines, the Web would be adramatically better place. Between this book and Steve's YSlow extension, there's reallyno excuse for having a sluggish web site anymore.-Joe Hewitt, Developer of Firebug debugger and Mozilla's DOM InspectorSteve Souders has done a fantastic job of distilling a massive, semi-arcane art down to a set of concise, actionable, pragmatic engineering steps that will change the world of web performance.-Eric Lawrence, Developer of the Fiddler Web Debugger, Microsoft Corporation

Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution


Steven Levy - 1984
    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.

Go in Action


William Kennedy - 2014
    The book begins by introducing the unique features and concepts of Go. Then, you'll get hands-on experience writing real-world applications including websites and network servers, as well as techniques to manipulate and convert data at speeds that will make your friends jealous.

The Nature of Code


Daniel Shiffman - 2012
    Readers will progress from building a basic physics engine to creating intelligent moving objects and complex systems, setting the foundation for further experiments in generative design. Subjects covered include forces, trigonometry, fractals, cellular automata, self-organization, and genetic algorithms. The book's examples are written in Processing, an open-source language and development environment built on top of the Java programming language. On the book's website (http://www.natureofcode.com), the examples run in the browser via Processing's JavaScript mode.

97 Things Every Software Architect Should Know: Collective Wisdom from the Experts


Richard Monson-Haefel - 2009
    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.

Seven Concurrency Models in Seven Weeks: When Threads Unravel


Paul Butcher - 2014
    Concurrency and parallelism are the keys, and Seven Concurrency Models in Seven Weeks equips you for this new world. See how emerging technologies such as actors and functional programming address issues with traditional threads and locks development. Learn how to exploit the parallelism in your computer's GPU and leverage clusters of machines with MapReduce and Stream Processing. And do it all with the confidence that comes from using tools that help you write crystal clear, high-quality code. This book will show you how to exploit different parallel architectures to improve your code's performance, scalability, and resilience. Learn about the perils of traditional threads and locks programming and how to overcome them through careful design and by working with the standard library. See how actors enable software running on geographically distributed computers to collaborate, handle failure, and create systems that stay up 24/7/365. Understand why shared mutable state is the enemy of robust concurrent code, and see how functional programming together with technologies such as Software Transactional Memory (STM) and automatic parallelism help you tame it. You'll learn about the untapped potential within every GPU and how GPGPU software can unleash it. You'll see how to use MapReduce to harness massive clusters to solve previously intractible problems, and how, in concert with Stream Processing, big data can be tamed. With an understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of each of the different models and hardware architectures, you'll be empowered to tackle any problem with confidence.What You Need: The example code can be compiled and executed on *nix, OS X, or Windows. Instructions on how to download the supporting build systems are given in each chapter.