Book picks similar to
Solution Architecture Foundations by Mark Lovatt


professional
programming
architecture
business-analysis

Node.Js the Right Way: Practical, Server-Side JavaScript That Scales


Jim R. Wilson - 2013
    Ready to take JavaScript beyond the browser, explore dynamic languages features and embrace evented programming? Explore the fun, growing repository of Node modules provided by npm. Work with multiple protocols, load-balanced RESTful web services, express, 0MQ, Redis, CouchDB, and more. Develop production-grade Node applications fast. JavaScript is the backbone of the modern web, powering nearly every web app's user interface. Node.js is JavaScript for the server. This book shows you how to develop small, fast, low-profile, useful, networked applications. You'll write asynchronous, non-blocking code using Node's style and patterns. You'll cluster and load balance your services with Node core features and third-party tools. You'll work with many protocols, creating RESTful web services, TCP socket clients and servers, and more. This short book packs a hefty dose of Node.js. You'll test your code's functionality and performance under load. You'll learn important aspects of Node development--from its architecture and core, to its ecosystem of third-party modules. You'll discover how Node pairs a server-side event loop with a JavaScript runtime to produce screaming fast, non-blocking concurrency. Through a series of practical programming domains, you'll use the latest available ECMAScript Harmony features and harness key Node classes such as EventEmitter and Stream. Throughout the book, you'll develop real programs that are small, fast, low-profile, and useful. Get ready to join a smart community that's rapidly advancing the state of the art in web development.What You Need: Latest stable release of Node.js, this book was written with 0.12.x in mind. The 0MQ (ZeroMQ) library, version 3.2 or higher.

A Theory of Fun for Game Design


Raph Koster - 2004
    It features a novel way of teaching interactive designers how to create and improve their designs to incorporate the highest degree of fun. As the book shows, designing for fun is all about making interactive products like games highly entertaining, engaging, and addictive. The book's unique approach of providing a highly visual storyboard approach combined with a narrative on the art and practice of designing for fun is sure to be a hit with game and interactive designers.At first glance A Theory of Fun for Game Design is a book that will truly inspire and challenge game designers to think in new ways; however, its universal message will influence designers from all walks of life. This book captures the real essence of what drives us to seek out products and experiences that are truly fun and entertaining. The author masterfully presents his engaging theory by showing readers how many designs are lacking because they are predictable and not engaging enough. He then explains how great designers use different types of elements in new ways to make designs more fun and compelling. Anyone who is interested in design will enjoy how the book works on two levels--as a quick inspiration guide to game design, or as an informative discussion that details the insightful thinking from a great mind in the game industry.

What Is Data Science?


Mike Loukides - 2011
    Five years ago, in What is Web 2.0, Tim O'Reilly said that "data is the next Intel Inside." But what does that statement mean? Why do we suddenly care about statistics and about data? This report examines the many sides of data science -- the technologies, the companies and the unique skill sets.The web is full of "data-driven apps." Almost any e-commerce application is a data-driven application. There's a database behind a web front end, and middleware that talks to a number of other databases and data services (credit card processing companies, banks, and so on). But merely using data isn't really what we mean by "data science." A data application acquires its value from the data itself, and creates more data as a result. It's not just an application with data; it's a data product. Data science enables the creation of data products.

The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses


Jesse Schell - 2008
    The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses shows that the same basic principles of psychology that work for board games, card games and athletic games also are the keys to making top-quality video games. Good game design happens when you view your game from many different perspectives, or lenses. While touring through the unusual territory that is game design, this book gives the reader one hundred of these lenses—one hundred sets of insightful questions to ask yourself that will help make your game better. These lenses are gathered from fields as diverse as psychology, architecture, music, visual design, film, software engineering, theme park design, mathematics, writing, puzzle design, and anthropology. Anyone who reads this book will be inspired to become a better game designer—and will understand how to do it.

JavaScript: The Good Parts


Douglas Crockford - 2008
    This authoritative book scrapes away these bad features to reveal a subset of JavaScript that's more reliable, readable, and maintainable than the language as a whole--a subset you can use to create truly extensible and efficient code.Considered the JavaScript expert by many people in the development community, author Douglas Crockford identifies the abundance of good ideas that make JavaScript an outstanding object-oriented programming language-ideas such as functions, loose typing, dynamic objects, and an expressive object literal notation. Unfortunately, these good ideas are mixed in with bad and downright awful ideas, like a programming model based on global variables.When Java applets failed, JavaScript became the language of the Web by default, making its popularity almost completely independent of its qualities as a programming language. In JavaScript: The Good Parts, Crockford finally digs through the steaming pile of good intentions and blunders to give you a detailed look at all the genuinely elegant parts of JavaScript, including:SyntaxObjectsFunctionsInheritanceArraysRegular expressionsMethodsStyleBeautiful featuresThe real beauty? As you move ahead with the subset of JavaScript that this book presents, you'll also sidestep the need to unlearn all the bad parts. Of course, if you want to find out more about the bad parts and how to use them badly, simply consult any other JavaScript book.With JavaScript: The Good Parts, you'll discover a beautiful, elegant, lightweight and highly expressive language that lets you create effective code, whether you're managing object libraries or just trying to get Ajax to run fast. If you develop sites or applications for the Web, this book is an absolute must.

OCA Java SE 7 Programmer I Certification Guide: Prepare for the 1ZO-803 exam


Mala Gupta - 2012
    You'll explore a wide range of important Java topics as you systematically learn how to pass the certification exam. Each chapter starts with a list of the exam objectives covered in that chapter. You'll find sample questions and exercises designed to reinforce key concepts and to prepare you for what you'll see in the real exam, along with numerous tips, notes, and visual aids throughout the book.About This BookTo earn the OCA Java SE 7 Programmer Certification, you need to know your Java inside and out, and to pass the exam it's good to understand the test itself. This book cracks open the questions, exercises, and expectations you'll face on the OCA exam so you'll be ready and confident on test day.OCA Java SE 7 Programmer I Certification Guide is a comprehensive guide to the 1Z0-803 exam. You'll explore important Java topics as you systematically learn what is required. Each chapter starts with a list of exam objectives, followed by sample questions and exercises designed to reinforce key concepts. It provides multiple ways to digest important techniques and concepts, including analogies, diagrams, flowcharts, and lots of well-commented code.Written for developers with a working knowledge of Java who want to earn the OCA Java SE 7 Programmer I Certification.Purchase of the print book includes a free eBook in PDF, Kindle, and ePub formats from Manning Publications.What's InsideCovers all exam topicsHands-on coding exercisesHow to avoid built-in traps and pitfallsAbout the AuthorMala Gupta has been training programmers to pass Java certification exams since 2006. She holds OCA Java SE7 Programmer I, SCWCD, and SCJP certifications.Table of ContentsIntroductionJava basicsWorking with Java data typesMethods and encapsulationString, StringBuilder, Arrays, and ArrayListFlow controlWorking with inheritanceException handlingFull mock exam

Tom Kundig: Houses


Dung Ngo - 2006
    Kundig's projects, especially his houses, uniquely combine these two seemingly disparate sets of characteristics to produce some of the most inventive structures found in the architecture world today. Kundig's internationally acclaimed work is inspired by both the industrial structures with which he grew up in the Pacific Northwest and the vibrant craft cultures that are fostered there. His buildings uniquely meld industrial sensibilities and materials such as Cor-ten steel and concrete with an intuitive understanding of scale. As Kundig states, "The idea is insaperable from the fabrication, inseparable from the materials used."Tom Kundig: Houses presents five projects in depth, from their early conceptual sketches to their final lovingly wrought, intimate details. Kundig's houses reflect a sustained and active collaborative process between designer, craftsmen, and owners, resulting in houses that bring to life the architect's intentions, the materials used, and lines of unforgettable beauty.

Writing High-Performance .NET Code


Ben Watson - 2014
    Learn critical lessons from a person who helped design and build one of the largest high-performance .NET systems in the world.This book does not just teach you how the CLR works—it teaches you exactly what you need to do now to obtain the best performance today. It will expertly guide you through the nuts and bolts of extreme performance optimization in .NET, complete with in-depth examinations of CLR functionality, free tool recommendations and tutorials, useful anecdotes, and step-by-step guides to measure and improve performance.Among the topics you will learn are how to:-Choose what to measure and why-Use many amazing tools, freely available, to solve problems quickly-Understand the .NET garbage collector and its effect on your application-Use effective coding patterns that lead to optimal garbage collection performance-Diagnose common GC-related issues-Reduce costs of JITting-Use multiple threads sanely and effectively, avoiding synchronization problems-Know which .NET features and APIs to use and which to avoid-Use code generation to avoid performance problems-Measure everything and expose hidden performance issues-Instrument your program with performance counters and ETW events-Use the latest and greatest .NET features-Ensure your code can run on mobile devices without problems-Build a performance-minded team…and much more.

Production-Ready Microservices: Building Standardized Systems Across an Engineering Organization


Susan Fowler - 2016
    After splitting a monolithic application or building a microservice ecosystem from scratch, many engineers are left wondering what s next. In this practical book, author Susan Fowler presents a set of microservice standards in depth, drawing from her experience standardizing over a thousand microservices at Uber. You ll learn how to design microservices that are stable, reliable, scalable, fault tolerant, performant, monitored, documented, and prepared for any catastrophe.Explore production-readiness standards, including:Stability and Reliability: develop, deploy, introduce, and deprecate microservices; protect against dependency failuresScalability and Performance: learn essential components for achieving greater microservice efficiencyFault Tolerance and Catastrophe Preparedness: ensure availability by actively pushing microservices to fail in real timeMonitoring: learn how to monitor, log, and display key metrics; establish alerting and on-call proceduresDocumentation and Understanding: mitigate tradeoffs that come with microservice adoption, including organizational sprawl and technical debt"

Unit Testing: Principles, Practices, and Patterns


Vladimir Khorikov - 2019
    You’ll learn to spot which tests are performing, which need refactoring, and which need to be deleted entirely! Upgrade your testing suite with new testing styles, good patterns, and reliable automated testing.

Database Internals: A deep-dive into how distributed data systems work


Alex Petrov - 2019
    But with so many distributed databases and tools available today, it’s often difficult to understand what each one offers and how they differ. With this practical guide, Alex Petrov guides developers through the concepts behind modern database and storage engine internals.Throughout the book, you’ll explore relevant material gleaned from numerous books, papers, blog posts, and the source code of several open source databases. These resources are listed at the end of parts one and two. You’ll discover that the most significant distinctions among many modern databases reside in subsystems that determine how storage is organized and how data is distributed.This book examines:Storage engines: Explore storage classification and taxonomy, and dive into B-Tree-based and immutable log structured storage engines, with differences and use-cases for eachDistributed systems: Learn step-by-step how nodes and processes connect and build complex communication patterns, from UDP to reliable consensus protocolsDatabase clusters: Discover how to achieve consistent models for replicated data

Lean UX: Applying Lean Principles to Improve User Experience


Jeff Gothelf - 2012
    In this insightful book, leading advocate Jeff Gothelf teaches you valuable Lean UX principles, tactics, and techniques from the ground up—how to rapidly experiment with design ideas, validate them with real users, and continually adjust your design based on what you learn.Inspired by Lean and Agile development theories, Lean UX lets you focus on the actual experience being designed, rather than deliverables. This book shows you how to collaborate closely with other members of the product team, and gather feedback early and often. You’ll learn how to drive the design in short, iterative cycles to assess what works best for the business and the user. Lean UX shows you how to make this change—for the better.Frame a vision of the problem you’re solving and focus your team on the right outcomesBring the designers’ toolkit to the rest of your product teamShare your insights with your team much earlier in the processCreate Minimum Viable Products to determine which ideas are validIncorporate the voice of the customer throughout the project cycleMake your team more productive: combine Lean UX with Agile’s Scrum frameworkUnderstand the organizational shifts necessary to integrate Lean UXLean UX received the 2013 Jolt Award from Dr. Dobb's Journal as the best book of the year. The publication's panel of judges chose five notable books, published during a 12-month period ending June 30, that every serious programmer should read.

Talking with Tech Leads


Patrick Kua - 2014
    Discover how more than 35 Tech Leads find the delicate balance between the technical and non-technical worlds. Discover the challenges a Tech Lead faces and how to overcome them. You may be surprised by the lessons they have to share.Now available at https://leanpub.com/talking-with-tech...

The Art of Readable Code


Dustin Boswell - 2010
    Over the past five years, authors Dustin Boswell and Trevor Foucher have analyzed hundreds of examples of "bad code" (much of it their own) to determine why they’re bad and how they could be improved. Their conclusion? You need to write code that minimizes the time it would take someone else to understand it—even if that someone else is you.This book focuses on basic principles and practical techniques you can apply every time you write code. Using easy-to-digest code examples from different languages, each chapter dives into a different aspect of coding, and demonstrates how you can make your code easy to understand.Simplify naming, commenting, and formatting with tips that apply to every line of codeRefine your program’s loops, logic, and variables to reduce complexity and confusionAttack problems at the function level, such as reorganizing blocks of code to do one task at a timeWrite effective test code that is thorough and concise—as well as readable"Being aware of how the code you create affects those who look at it later is an important part of developing software. The authors did a great job in taking you through the different aspects of this challenge, explaining the details with instructive examples." —Michael Hunger, passionate Software Developer

Breaking Ground


Daniel Libeskind - 2004
     Drawing on his uncommon background and global perspective, in Breaking Ground Daniel Libeskind explores ideas about tragedy and hope, and the way in which architecture can memorialize-and reshape-human experience. Born in 1946 to Holocaust survivors in Poland, Daniel Libeskind eventually emigrated to New York City in 1959. A virtuoso musician before studying architecture, Libeskind has designed iconic buildings around the world, including the Jewish Museum Berlin and the Imperial War Museum in Manchester, England. In February 2003, Libeskind was chosen as the Master Plan Architect for the World Trade Center reconstruction. Full of the vitality, humor, and visionary spark that helped win him the Trade Center Commission, Breaking Ground invites readers to see architecture-and the larger world-through new perspectives.