Elements of Clojure


Zachary Tellman - 2019
    This is necessary because, in the words of Michael Polanyi, "we can know more than we can tell." Our design choices are not the result of an ineluctable chain of logic; they come from a deeper place, one which is visceral and inarticulate.Polanyi calls this "tacit knowledge", a thing which we only understand as part of something else. When we speak, we do not focus on making sounds, we focus on our words. We understand the muscular act of speech, but would struggle to explain it.To write software, we must learn where to draw boundaries. Good software is built through effective indirection. We seem to have decided that this skill can only be learned through practice; it cannot be taught, except by example. Our decisions may improve with time, but not our ability to explain them. It's true that the study of these questions cannot yield a closed-form solution for judging software design. We can make our software simple, but we cannot do the same to its problem domain, its users, or the physical world. Our tacit knowledge of this environment will always inform our designs.This doesn't mean that we can simply ignore our design process. Polanyi tells us that tacit knowledge only suffices until we fail, and the software industry is awash with failure. Our designs may never be provably correct, but we can give voice to the intuition that shaped them. Our process may always be visceral, but it doesn't have to be inarticulate.And so this book does not offer knowledge, it offers clarity. It is aimed at readers who know Clojure, but struggle to articulate the rationale of their designs to themselves and others. Readers who use other languages, but have a passing familiarity with Clojure, may also find this book useful.

Understanding Computation: From Simple Machines to Impossible Programs


Tom Stuart - 2013
    Understanding Computation explains theoretical computer science in a context you’ll recognize, helping you appreciate why these ideas matter and how they can inform your day-to-day programming.Rather than use mathematical notation or an unfamiliar academic programming language like Haskell or Lisp, this book uses Ruby in a reductionist manner to present formal semantics, automata theory, and functional programming with the lambda calculus. It’s ideal for programmers versed in modern languages, with little or no formal training in computer science.* Understand fundamental computing concepts, such as Turing completeness in languages* Discover how programs use dynamic semantics to communicate ideas to machines* Explore what a computer can do when reduced to its bare essentials* Learn how universal Turing machines led to today’s general-purpose computers* Perform complex calculations, using simple languages and cellular automata* Determine which programming language features are essential for computation* Examine how halting and self-referencing make some computing problems unsolvable* Analyze programs by using abstract interpretation and type systems

The Self-Taught Programmer: The Definitive Guide to Programming Professionally


Cory Althoff - 2017
    After a year of self-study, I learned to program well enough to land a job as a software engineer II at eBay. Once I got there, I realized I was severely under-prepared. I was overwhelmed by the amount of things I needed to know but hadn't learned yet. My journey learning to program, and my experience at my first job as a software engineer were the inspiration for this book. This book is not just about learning to program; although you will learn to code. If you want to program professionally, it is not enough to learn to code; that is why, in addition to helping you learn to program, I also cover the rest of the things you need to know to program professionally that classes and books don't teach you. "The Self-taught Programmer" is a roadmap, a guide to take you from writing your first Python program, to passing your first technical interview. I divided the book into five sections: 1. Start to program in Python 3 and build your first program.2. Learn Object-oriented programming and create a powerful Python program to get you hooked.3. Learn to use tools like Git, Bash, and regular expressions. Then use your new coding skills to build a web scraper.4. Study Computer Science fundamentals like data structures and algorithms.5. Finish with best coding practices, tips for working with a team, and advice on landing a programming job.You CAN learn to program professionally. The path is there. Will you take it?

Just for Fun: The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary


Linus Torvalds - 2001
    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.

Applying UML and Patterns: An Introduction to Object-Oriented Analysis and Design and Iterative Development


Craig Larman - 2000
    Building on two widely acclaimed previous editions, Craig Larman has updated this book to fully reflect the new UML 2 standard, to help you master the art of object design, and to promote high-impact, iterative, and skillful agile modeling practices.Developers and students will learn object-oriented analysis and design (OOA/D) through three iterations of two cohesive, start-to-finish case studies. These case studies incrementally introduce key skills, essential OO principles and patterns, UML notation, and best practices. You won’t just learn UML diagrams - you’ll learn how to apply UML in the context of OO software development.Drawing on his unsurpassed experience as a mentor and consultant, Larman helps you understand evolutionary requirements and use cases, domain object modeling, responsibility-driven design, essential OO design, layered architectures, “Gang of Four” design patterns, GRASP, iterative methods, an agile approach to the Unified Process (UP), and much more. This edition’s extensive improvements include:- A stronger focus on helping you master OOA/D through case studies that demonstrate key OO principles and patterns, while also applying the UML- New coverage of UML 2, Agile Modeling, Test-Driven Development, and refactoring- Many new tips on combining iterative and evolutionary development with OOA/D- Updates for easier study, including new learning aids and graphics- New college educator teaching resources- Guidance on applying the UP in a light, agile spirit, complementary with other iterative methods such as XP and Scrum- Techniques for applying the UML to documenting architectures- A new chapter on evolutionary requirements, and much moreApplying UML and Patterns, Third Edition, is a lucid and practical introduction to thinking and designing with objects - and creating systems that are well crafted, robust, and maintainable.

REST in Practice: Hypermedia and Systems Architecture


Jim Webber - 2010
    You'll learn techniques for implementing specific Web technologies and patterns to solve the needs of a typical company as it grows from modest beginnings to become a global enterprise.Learn basic Web techniques for application integrationUse HTTP and the Web’s infrastructure to build scalable, fault-tolerant enterprise applicationsDiscover the Create, Read, Update, Delete (CRUD) pattern for manipulating resourcesBuild RESTful services that use hypermedia to model state transitions and describe business protocolsLearn how to make Web-based solutions secure and interoperableExtend integration patterns for event-driven computing with the Atom Syndication Format and implement multi-party interactions in AtomPubUnderstand how the Semantic Web will impact systems design

Programming Rust: Fast, Safe Systems Development


Jim Blandy - 2015
    Rust's modern, flexible types ensure your program is free of null pointer dereferences, double frees, dangling pointers, and similar bugs, all at compile time, without runtime overhead. In multi-threaded code, Rust catches data races at compile time, making concurrency much easier to use.Written by two experienced systems programmers, this book explains how Rust manages to bridge the gap between performance and safety, and how you can take advantage of it. Topics include:How Rust represents values in memory (with diagrams)Complete explanations of ownership, moves, borrows, and lifetimesCargo, rustdoc, unit tests, and how to publish your code on crates.io, Rust's public package repositoryHigh-level features like generic code, closures, collections, and iterators that make Rust productive and flexibleConcurrency in Rust: threads, mutexes, channels, and atomics, all much safer to use than in C or C++Unsafe code, and how to preserve the integrity of ordinary code that uses itExtended examples illustrating how pieces of the language fit together

The Soul of a New Machine


Tracy Kidder - 1981
    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

Concepts, Techniques, and Models of Computer Programming


Peter Van Roy - 2004
    The book focuses on techniques of lasting value and explains them precisely in terms of a simple abstract machine. The book presents all major programming paradigms in a uniform framework that shows their deep relationships and how and where to use them together.After an introduction to programming concepts, the book presents both well-known and lesser-known computation models ("programming paradigms"). Each model has its own set of techniques and each is included on the basis of its usefulness in practice. The general models include declarative programming, declarative concurrency, message-passing concurrency, explicit state, object-oriented programming, shared-state concurrency, and relational programming. Specialized models include graphical user interface programming, distributed programming, and constraint programming. Each model is based on its kernel language—a simple core language that consists of a small number of programmer- significant elements. The kernel languages are introduced progressively, adding concepts one by one, thus showing the deep relationships between different models. The kernel languages are defined precisely in terms of a simple abstract machine. Because a wide variety of languages and programming paradigms can be modeled by a small set of closely related kernel languages, this approach allows programmer and student to grasp the underlying unity of programming. The book has many program fragments and exercises, all of which can be run on the Mozart Programming System, an Open Source software package that features an interactive incremental development environment.

The Effective Engineer: How to Leverage Your Efforts In Software Engineering to Make a Disproportionate and Meaningful Impact


Edmond Lau - 2015
    I'm going to share that mindset with you — along with hundreds of actionable techniques and proven habits — so you can shortcut those years.Introducing The Effective Engineer — the only book designed specifically for today's software engineers, based on extensive interviews with engineering leaders at top tech companies, and packed with hundreds of techniques to accelerate your career.For two years, I embarked on a quest seeking an answer to one question:How do the most effective engineers make their efforts, their teams, and their careers more successful?I interviewed and collected stories from engineering VPs, directors, managers, and other leaders at today's top software companies: established, household names like Google, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn; rapidly growing mid-sized companies like Dropbox, Square, Box, Airbnb, and Etsy; and startups like Reddit, Stripe, Instagram, and Lyft.These leaders shared stories about the most valuable insights they've learned and the most common and costly mistakes that they've seen engineers — sometimes themselves — make.This is just a small sampling of the hard questions I posed to them:- What engineering qualities correlate with future success?- What have you done that has paid off the highest returns?- What separates the most effective engineers you've worked with from everyone else?- What's the most valuable lesson your team has learned in the past year?- What advice do you give to new engineers on your team? Everyone's story is different, but many of the lessons share common themes.You'll get to hear stories like:- How did Instagram's team of 5 engineers build and support a service that grew to over 40 million users by the time the company was acquired?- How and why did Quora deploy code to production 40 to 50 times per day?- How did the team behind Google Docs become the fastest acquisition to rewrite its software to run on Google's infrastructure?- How does Etsy use continuous experimentation to design features that are guaranteed to increase revenue at launch?- How did Facebook's small infrastructure team effectively operate thousands of database servers?- How did Dropbox go from barely hiring any new engineers to nearly tripling its team size year-over-year? What's more, I've distilled their stories into actionable habits and lessons that you can follow step-by-step to make your career and your team more successful.The skills used by effective engineers are all learnable.And I'll teach them to you. With The Effective Engineer, I'll teach you a unifying framework called leverage — the value produced per unit of time invested — that you can use to identify the activities that produce disproportionate results.Here's a sneak peek at some of the lessons you'll learn. You'll learn how to:- Prioritize the right projects and tasks to increase your impact.- Earn more leeway from your peers and managers on your projects.- Spend less time maintaining and fixing software and more time building and shipping new features.- Produce more accurate software estimates.- Validate your ideas cheaply to reduce wasted work.- Navigate organizational and people-related bottlenecks.- Find the appropriate level of code reviews, testing, abstraction, and technical debt to balance speed and quality.- Shorten your debugging workflow to increase your iteration speed.

Effective Python: 59 Specific Ways to Write Better Python


Brett Slatkin - 2015
    This makes the book random-access: Items are easy to browse and study in whatever order the reader needs. I will be recommending "Effective Python" to students as an admirably compact source of mainstream advice on a very broad range of topics for the intermediate Python programmer. " Brandon Rhodes, software engineer at Dropbox and chair of PyCon 2016-2017" It s easy to start coding with Python, which is why the language is so popular. However, Python s unique strengths, charms, and expressiveness can be hard to grasp, and there are hidden pitfalls that can easily trip you up. " Effective Python " will help you master a truly Pythonic approach to programming, harnessing Python s full power to write exceptionally robust and well-performing code. Using the concise, scenario-driven style pioneered in Scott Meyers best-selling "Effective C++, " Brett Slatkin brings together 59 Python best practices, tips, and shortcuts, and explains them with realistic code examples. Drawing on years of experience building Python infrastructure at Google, Slatkin uncovers little-known quirks and idioms that powerfully impact code behavior and performance. You ll learn the best way to accomplish key tasks, so you can write code that s easier to understand, maintain, and improve. Key features includeActionable guidelines for all major areas of Python 3.x and 2.x development, with detailed explanations and examples Best practices for writing functions that clarify intention, promote reuse, and avoid bugs Coverage of how to accurately express behaviors with classes and objects Guidance on how to avoid pitfalls with metaclasses and dynamic attributes More efficient approaches to concurrency and parallelism Better techniques and idioms for using Python s built-in modules Tools and best practices for collaborative development Solutions for debugging, testing, and optimization in order to improve quality and performance "

Think Python


Allen B. Downey - 2002
    It covers the basics of computer programming, including variables and values, functions, conditionals and control flow, program development and debugging. Later chapters cover basic algorithms and data structures.

The Protocols (TCP/IP Illustrated, Volume 1)


W. Richard Stevens - 1993
    In eight chapters, it provides the most thorough coverage of TCP available. It also covers the newest TCP/IP features, including multicasting, path MTU discovery and long fat pipes. The author describes various protocols, including ARP, ICMP and UDP. He utilizes network diagnostic tools to actually show the protocols in action. He also explains how to avoid silly window syndrome (SWS) by using numerous helpful diagrams. This book gives you a broader understanding of concepts like connection establishment, timeout, retransmission and fragmentation. It is ideal for anyone wanting to gain a greater understanding of how the TCP/IP protocols work.

RESTful Web Services Cookbook


Subbu Allamaraju - 2010
    This cookbook includes more than 100 recipes to help you take advantage of REST, HTTP, and the infrastructure of the Web. You'll learn ways to design RESTful web services for client and server applications that meet performance, scalability, reliability, and security goals, no matter what programming language and development framework you use.Each recipe includes one or two problem statements, with easy-to-follow, step-by-step instructions for solving them, as well as examples using HTTP requests and responses, and XML, JSON, and Atom snippets. You'll also get implementation guidelines, and a discussion of the pros, cons, and trade-offs that come with each solution.Learn how to design resources to meet various application scenariosSuccessfully design representations and URIsImplement the hypertext constraint using links and link headersUnderstand when and how to use Atom and AtomPubKnow what and what not to do to support cachingLearn how to implement concurrency controlDeal with advanced use cases involving copying, merging, transactions, batch processing, and partial updatesSecure web services and support OAuth

The Little Book on CoffeeScript


Alex MacCaw - 2012
    Through example code, this guide demonstrates how CoffeeScript abstracts JavaScript, providing syntactical sugar and preventing many common errors. You’ll learn CoffeeScript’s syntax and idioms step by step, from basic variables and functions to complex comprehensions and classes.Written by Alex MacCaw, author of JavaScript Web Applications (O’Reilly), with contributions from CoffeeScript creator Jeremy Ashkenas, this book quickly teaches you best practices for using this language—not just on the client side, but for server-side applications as well. It’s time to take a ride with the little language that could.Discover how CoffeeScript’s syntax differs from JavaScriptLearn about features such as array comprehensions, destructuring assignments, and classesExplore CoffeeScript idioms and compare them to their JavaScript counterpartsCompile CoffeeScript files in static sites with the Cake build systemUse CommonJS modules to structure and deploy CoffeeScript client-side applicationsExamine JavaScript’s bad parts—including features CoffeeScript was able to fix