As a professional C++ developer and former Harvard teaching fellow, I know what you need to know to be a great C++ programmer, and I know how to teach it, one step at a time. I know where people struggle, and why, and how to make it clear. I cover every step of the programming process, including:Getting the tools you need to program and how to use them*Basic language feature like variables, loops and functions*How to go from an idea to code*A clear, understandable explanation of pointers*Strings, file IO, arrays, references*Classes and advanced class design*C++-specific programming patterns*Object oriented programming*Data structures and the standard template library (STL)Key concepts are reinforced with quizzes and over 75 practice problems.

    And through CODE, we see how this ingenuity and our very human compulsion to communicate have driven the technological innovations of the past two centuries. Using everyday objects and familiar language systems such as Braille and Morse code, author Charles Petzold weaves an illuminating narrative for anyone who’s ever wondered about the secret inner life of computers and other smart machines. It’s a cleverly illustrated and eminently comprehensible story—and along the way, you’ll discover you’ve gained a real context for understanding today’s world of PCs, digital media, and the Internet. No matter what your level of technical savvy, CODE will charm you—and perhaps even awaken the technophile within.

    But Neil Armstrong and Sally Ride would have never made history, and humankind would not have touched the stars, if not for the men and women on the ground who lit the fuse that launched the first rockets.Enthralled as a boy by the exploits of Flash Gordon and the novels of Robert Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke—who put the science in science fiction—James French became one of the original unsung engineers of America’s groundbreaking space program. His fascinating memoir offers an up-close-and-technical look at building, testing, and perfecting the pioneering Saturn rockets and original lunar landing module, and he shares true tales, both humorous and harrowing, of life—and near death—on the front lines of scientific exploration.If you’ve ever said, “It’s not rocket science,” you’re right. It’s rocket engineering—and here’s your chance to marvel at how it changed the world and made it possible to explore all that lies beyond Earth. James R French graduated from MIT in 1958 with a degree of BSME Specializing in Propulsion. His first job was with Rocketdyne Division of North American Aviation where he worked on developmental testing of H-1 engines and combustion devices hardware for F-1 and J-2 engines used in Saturn 5. Mr. French has also worked at TRW Systems, where he was Lead Development Test Engineer on the Lunar Module Descent Engine, and Jet Propulsion Laboratory where he was Advanced Planetary studies Manager as well as Chief Engineer for the SP-100 Space Nuclear Power System and worked on Mariners 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9; Viking 1 & 2 and Voyager 1 & 2. . In 1986, he helped found American Rocket Co., a commercial launch company.Since 1987, Mr. French has been consultant to a variety of aerospace companies, SDIO, NASA, and USAF. He has participated in various startup companies in the private space flight arena and currently consults extensively to Blue Origin. Mr. French is co-author with Dr. Michael Griffin of the best-selling text Space Vehicle Design, published by AIAA. The second edition of the book has received the Summerfield Book Award for 2008. Mr. French is a Fellow of both AIAA and the British Interplanetary Society and a 50+ year member of AIAA. He has held several Technical Committee and other posts in AIAA. Cover design by Evan Twohy

    It has become popular in recent years because of its simplicity, conciseness, and clarity. This book teaches functional programming as a way of thinking and problem solving, using Haskell, the most popular purely functional language. Rather than using the conventional (boring) mathematical examples commonly found in other programming language textbooks, the author uses examples drawn from multimedia applications, including graphics, animation, and computer music, thus rewarding the reader with working programs for inherently more interesting applications. Aimed at both beginning and advanced programmers, this tutorial begins with a gentle introduction to functional programming and moves rapidly on to more advanced topics. Details about progamming in Haskell are presented in boxes throughout the text so they can be easily found and referred to.

    "In the form of a diary, he takes us through the crazy journey that is making music. His excellent recollections of the excesses of morons and geniuses involved in creating melodies and rhythms for us to enjoy are sheer entertainment." - Musician Robert Palmer (from his foreword for the book). From the author's first glimpse of a magical recording studio in the mid-1960s up through a busy career that continues to the present day, this rollicking story can only be told by those that were there. As the young tape operator on sessions for The Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, and Joe Cocker at the famed Olympic Sound Studios in London, Phill learned the ropes from experienced engineers and producers such as Glyn Johns and Eddie Kramer. Phill soon worked his way up engineering sessions for Mott the Hoople, David Bowie, Led Zeppelin, Bob Marley and many other lendary rockers. He eventually became a freelance engineer/producer and worked with Roxy Music, Go West, Talk Talk, and Robert Plant. But more than a recollection of participating in some of the most treasured music of the past 40 years, this is a man's journey through life as Phill struggles to balance his home and family with a job where drug abuse, chaos, rampant egos, greed, lies and the increasingly invasive record business take their toll. It's also a cautionary tale, where long workdays and what once seemed like harmless indulgences become health risks, yet eventually offer a time to reflect back on.

    His breaking of the German U-boat Enigma cipher in World War II ensured Allied-American control of the Atlantic. But Turing's vision went far beyond the desperate wartime struggle. Already in the 1930s he had defined the concept of the universal machine, which underpins the computer revolution. In 1945 he was a pioneer of electronic computer design. But Turing's true goal was the scientific understanding of the mind, brought out in the drama and wit of the famous "Turing test" for machine intelligence and in his prophecy for the twenty-first century.Drawn in to the cockpit of world events and the forefront of technological innovation, Alan Turing was also an innocent and unpretentious gay man trying to live in a society that criminalized him. In 1952 he revealed his homosexuality and was forced to participate in a humiliating treatment program, and was ever after regarded as a security risk. His suicide in 1954 remains one of the many enigmas in an astonishing life story.

    However, according to Hofstadter, the formal system that underlies all mental activity transcends the system that supports it. If life can grow out of the formal chemical substrate of the cell, if consciousness can emerge out of a formal system of firing neurons, then so too will computers attain human intelligence. Gödel, Escher, Bach is a wonderful exploration of fascinating ideas at the heart of cognitive science: meaning, reduction, recursion, and much more.

    With jokes, puns, and a rigorous problem solving based approach. You can download all the code samples used in the book from here: http://www.robmiles.com/s/Yellow-Book...

    In The Master Algorithm, Pedro Domingos lifts the veil to give us a peek inside the learning machines that power Google, Amazon, and your smartphone. He assembles a blueprint for the future universal learner--the Master Algorithm--and discusses what it will mean for business, science, and society. If data-ism is today's philosophy, this book is its bible.

    Tracy Kidder got a preview of this world in the late 1970s when he observed the engineers of Data General design and build a new 32-bit minicomputer in just one year. His thoughtful, prescient book, The Soul of a New Machine, tells stories of 35-year-old "veteran" engineers hiring recent college graduates and encouraging them to work harder and faster on complex and difficult projects, exploiting the youngsters' ignorance of normal scheduling processes while engendering a new kind of work ethic.These days, we are used to the "total commitment" philosophy of managing technical creation, but Kidder was surprised and even a little alarmed at the obsessions and compulsions he found. From in-house political struggles to workers being permitted to tease management to marathon 24-hour work sessions, The Soul of a New Machine explores concepts that already seem familiar, even old-hat, less than 20 years later. Kidder plainly admires his subjects; while he admits to hopeless confusion about their work, he finds their dedication heroic. The reader wonders, though, what will become of it all, now and in the future. —Rob Lightner

    Then he wrote a groundbreaking operating system and distributed it via the Internet -- for free. Today Torvalds is an international folk hero. And his creation LINUX is used by over 12 million people as well as by companies such as IBM.Now, in a narrative that zips along with the speed of e-mail, Torvalds gives a history of his renegade software while candidly revealing the quirky mind of a genius. The result is an engrossing portrayal of a man with a revolutionary vision, who challenges our values and may change our world.

    And they did it without fanfare or recognition from their employer. Hiltzik's Dealers of Lightning provides a fascinating look at technohistory that sets the record straight. In Dealers of Lightning, Hiltzik describes the forces and faces behind the revolution that the Xerox PARC team single-handedly spawned. The Xerox PARC group was composed solely of top technical minds. The decision was made at Xerox headquarters to give the team complete freedom from deadlines and directives, in hopes of fostering a true creative environment. It worked — perhaps too well. The team responded with a steady output of amazing technology, including the first version of the Internet, the first personal computer, user-friendly word-processing programs, and pop-up menus. Xerox, far from ready for the explosion of innovation, failed to utilize the technology dreamed up by the group. Out of all the dazzling inventions born at Xerox PARC, only a handful were developed and marketed by Xerox. However, one of these inventions, the laser printer, proved successful enough to earn billions for the company, therefore justifying its investment in the research center. Most oftheteam's creations would go on to be developed and perfected by other companies, such as IBM, Apple, and Microsoft. Drawing from interviews with the engineers, executives, and scientists involved in the Xerox PARC, Dealers of Lightning chronicles an amazing era of egos, ideas, and inventions at the dawn of the computer age.

    The story of information begins in a time profoundly unlike our own, when every thought and utterance vanishes as soon as it is born. From the invention of scripts and alphabets to the long-misunderstood talking drums of Africa, Gleick tells the story of information technologies that changed the very nature of human consciousness. He provides portraits of the key figures contributing to the inexorable development of our modern understanding of information: Charles Babbage, the idiosyncratic inventor of the first great mechanical computer; Ada Byron, the brilliant and doomed daughter of the poet, who became the first true programmer; pivotal figures like Samuel Morse and Alan Turing; and Claude Shannon, the creator of information theory itself. And then the information age arrives. Citizens of this world become experts willy-nilly: aficionados of bits and bytes. And we sometimes feel we are drowning, swept by a deluge of signs and signals, news and images, blogs and tweets. The Information is the story of how we got here and where we are heading.

    A simple web search picks out a handful of relevant needles from the world's biggest haystack: the billions of pages on the World Wide Web. Uploading a photo to Facebook transmits millions of pieces of information over numerous error-prone network links, yet somehow a perfect copy of the photo arrives intact. Without even knowing it, we use public-key cryptography to transmit secret information like credit card numbers; and we use digital signatures to verify the identity of the websites we visit. How do our computers perform these tasks with such ease? This is the first book to answer that question in language anyone can understand, revealing the extraordinary ideas that power our PCs, laptops, and smartphones. Using vivid examples, John MacCormick explains the fundamental "tricks" behind nine types of computer algorithms, including artificial intelligence (where we learn about the "nearest neighbor trick" and "twenty questions trick"), Google's famous PageRank algorithm (which uses the "random surfer trick"), data compression, error correction, and much more. These revolutionary algorithms have changed our world: this book unlocks their secrets, and lays bare the incredible ideas that our computers use every day.

    As the words "at work" suggest, Peter Seibel focuses on how his interviewees tackle the day–to–day work of programming, while revealing much more, like how they became great programmers, how they recognize programming talent in others, and what kinds of problems they find most interesting. Hundreds of people have suggested names of programmers to interview on the Coders at Work web site: http://www.codersatwork.com. The complete list was 284 names. Having digested everyone’s feedback, we selected 16 folks who’ve been kind enough to agree to be interviewed:- Frances Allen: Pioneer in optimizing compilers, first woman to win the Turing Award (2006) and first female IBM fellow- Joe Armstrong: Inventor of Erlang- Joshua Bloch: Author of the Java collections framework, now at Google- Bernie Cosell: One of the main software guys behind the original ARPANET IMPs and a master debugger- Douglas Crockford: JSON founder, JavaScript architect at Yahoo!- L. Peter Deutsch: Author of Ghostscript, implementer of Smalltalk-80 at Xerox PARC and Lisp 1.5 on PDP-1- Brendan Eich: Inventor of JavaScript, CTO of the Mozilla Corporation - Brad Fitzpatrick: Writer of LiveJournal, OpenID, memcached, and Perlbal - Dan Ingalls: Smalltalk implementor and designer- Simon Peyton Jones: Coinventor of Haskell and lead designer of Glasgow Haskell Compiler- Donald Knuth: Author of The Art of Computer Programming and creator of TeX- Peter Norvig: Director of Research at Google and author of the standard text on AI- Guy Steele: Coinventor of Scheme and part of the Common Lisp Gang of Five, currently working on Fortress- Ken Thompson: Inventor of UNIX- Jamie Zawinski: Author of XEmacs and early Netscape/Mozilla hackerWhat you’ll learn:How the best programmers in the world do their jobWho is this book for?Programmers interested in the point of view of leaders in the field. Programmers looking for approaches that work for some of these outstanding programmers.