Game Programming Patterns


Robert Nystrom - 2011
    Commercial game development expert Robert Nystrom presents an array of general solutions to problems encountered in game development. For example, you'll learn how double-buffering enables a player to perceive smooth and realistic motion, and how the service locator pattern can help you provide access to services such as sound without coupling your code to any particular sound driver or sound hardware. Games have much in common with other software, but also a number of unique constraints. Some of the patterns in this book are well-known in other domains of software development. Other of the patterns are unique to gaming. In either case, Robert Nystrom bridges from the ivory tower world of software architecture to the in-the-trenches reality of hardcore game programming. You'll learn the patterns and the general problems that they solve. You'll come away able to apply powerful and reusable architectural solutions that enable you to produce higher quality games with less effort than before. Applies classic design patterns to game programming. Introduces new patterns specific to game programming. Brings abstract software architecture down to Earth with approachable writing and an emphasis on simple code that shows each pattern in practice. What you'll learn Overcome architectural challenges unique to game programming Apply lessons from the larger software world to games. Tie different parts of a game (graphics, sound, AI) into a cohesive whole. Create elegant and maintainable architecture. Achieve good, low-level performance. Gain insight into professional, game development. Who this book is forGame Programming Patterns is aimed at professional game programmers who, while successful in shipping games, are frustrated at how hard it sometimes is to add and modify features when a game is under development. Game Programming Patterns shows how to apply modern software practices to the problem of game development while still maintaining the blazing-fast performance demanded by hard-core gamers. Game Programming Patterns also appeals to those learning about game programming in their spare time. Hobbyists and aspiring professionals alike will find much to learn in this book about pathfinding, collision detection, and other game-programming problem domains.

Modern Vim: Craft Your Development Environment with Vim 8 and Neovim


Drew Neil - 2018
    Integrate your editor with tools for building, testing, linting, indexing, and searching your codebase. Discover the future of Vim with Neovim: a fork of Vim that includes a built-in terminal emulator that will transform your workflow. Whether you choose to switch to Neovim or stick with Vim 8, you’ll be a better developer.A serious tool for programmers and web developers, no other text editor comes close to Vim for speed and efficiency. Make Vim the centerpiece of a Unix-based IDE as you discover new ways to work with Vim 8 and Neovim in more than 30 hands-on tips.Execute tasks asynchronously, allowing you to continue in Vim while linting, grepping, building a project, or running a test suite. Install plugins to be loaded on startup—or on-demand when you need them—with Vim 8’s new package support. Save and restore sessions, enabling you to quit Vim and restart again while preserving your window layout and undo history. Use Neovim as a drop-in replacement for Vim—it supports all of the features Vim 8 offers and more, including an integrated terminal that lets you quickly perform interactive commands. And if you enjoy using tmux and Vim together, you’ll love Neovim’s terminal emulator, which lets you run an interactive shell in a buffer. The terminal buffers fit naturally with Vim’s split windows, and you can use Normal mode commands to scroll, search, copy, and paste. On top of all that: Neovim’s terminal buffers are scriptable.With Vim at the core of your development environment, you’ll become a faster and more efficient developer.

Python Crash Course: A Hands-On, Project-Based Introduction to Programming


Eric Matthes - 2015
    You'll also learn how to make your programs interactive and how to test your code safely before adding it to a project. In the second half of the book, you'll put your new knowledge into practice with three substantial projects: a Space Invaders-inspired arcade game, data visualizations with Python's super-handy libraries, and a simple web app you can deploy online.As you work through Python Crash Course, you'll learn how to: Use powerful Python libraries and tools, including matplotlib, NumPy, and PygalMake 2D games that respond to keypresses and mouse clicks, and that grow more difficult as the game progressesWork with data to generate interactive visualizationsCreate and customize simple web apps and deploy them safely onlineDeal with mistakes and errors so you can solve your own programming problemsIf you've been thinking seriously about digging into programming, Python Crash Course will get you up to speed and have you writing real programs fast. Why wait any longer? Start your engines and code!

Exceptional Ruby: Master the Art of Handling Failure in Ruby


Avdi Grimm - 2011
    Writing code that handles unexpected errors and still works is really hard. Most of us learn by trial and error. This short book removes the uncertainty. With over 100 pages of content and dozens of working examples, you’ll learn everything from the mechanics of how exceptions work to how to design a robust failure management architecture for your app or library. Whether you are a Ruby novice or a seasoned veteran, Exceptional Ruby will help you write cleaner, more resilient Ruby code.

Learning the vi and Vim Editors


Arnold Robbins - 1987
    Editors are the subject of adoration and worship, or of scorn and ridicule, depending upon whether the topic of discussion is your editor or someone else's.vi has been the standard editor for close to 30 years. Popular on Unix and Linux, it has a growing following on Windows systems, too. Most experienced system administrators cite vi as their tool of choice. And since 1986, this book has been the guide for vi. However, Unix systems are not what they were 30 years ago, and neither is this book. While retaining all the valuable features of previous editions, the 7th edition of Learning the vi and vim Editors has been expanded to include detailed information on vim, the leading vi clone. vim is the default version of vi on most Linux systems and on Mac OS X, and is available for many other operating systems too. With this guide, you learn text editing basics and advanced tools for both editors, such as multi-window editing, how to write both interactive macros and scripts to extend the editor, and power tools for programmers -- all in the easy-to-follow style that has made this book a classic.Learning the vi and vim Editors includes:A complete introduction to text editing with vi:How to move around vi in a hurry Beyond the basics, such as using buffers vi's global search and replacement Advanced editing, including customizing vi and executing Unix commandsHow to make full use of vim: Extended text objects and more powerful regular expressions Multi-window editing and powerful vim scripts How to make full use of the GUI version of vim, called gvim vim's enhancements for programmers, such as syntax highlighting, folding and extended tags Coverage of three other popular vi clones -- nvi, elvis, and vile -- is also included. You'll find several valuable appendixes, including an alphabetical quick reference to both vi and ex mode commands for regular vi and for vim, plus an updated appendix on vi and the Internet. Learning either vi or vim is required knowledge if you use Linux or Unix, and in either case, reading this book is essential. After reading this book, the choice of editor will be obvious for you too.

Perl Best Practices: Standards and Styles for Developing Maintainable Code


Damian Conway - 2005
    They aren't conscious of all the choices they make, like how they format their source, the names they use for variables, or the kinds of loops they use. They're focused entirely on problems they're solving, solutions they're creating, and algorithms they're implementing. So they write code in the way that seems natural, that happens intuitively, and that feels good.But if you're serious about your profession, intuition isn't enough. Perl Best Practices author Damian Conway explains that rules, conventions, standards, and practices not only help programmers communicate and coordinate with one another, they also provide a reliable framework for thinking about problems, and a common language for expressing solutions. This is especially critical in Perl, because the language is designed to offer many ways to accomplish the same task, and consequently it supports many incompatible dialects.With a good dose of Aussie humor, Dr. Conway (familiar to many in the Perl community) offers 256 guidelines on the art of coding to help you write better Perl code--in fact, the best Perl code you possibly can. The guidelines cover code layout, naming conventions, choice of data and control structures, program decomposition, interface design and implementation, modularity, object orientation, error handling, testing, and debugging.They're designed to work together to produce code that is clear, robust, efficient, maintainable, and concise, but Dr. Conway doesn't pretend that this is the one true universal and unequivocal set of best practices. Instead, Perl Best Practices offers coherent and widely applicable suggestions based on real-world experience of how code is actually written, rather than on someone's ivory-tower theories on how software ought to be created.Most of all, Perl Best Practices offers guidelines that actually work, and that many developers around the world are already using. Much like Perl itself, these guidelines are about helping you to get your job done, without getting in the way.Praise for Perl Best Practices from Perl community members:"As a manager of a large Perl project, I'd ensure that every member of my team has a copy of Perl Best Practices on their desk, and use it as the basis for an in-house style guide." -- Randal Schwartz"There are no more excuses for writing bad Perl programs. All levels of Perl programmer will be more productive after reading this book." -- Peter Scott"Perl Best Practices will be the next big important book in the evolution of Perl. The ideas and practices Damian lays down will help bring Perl out from under the embarrassing heading of "scripting languages". Many of us have known Perl is a real programming language, worthy of all the tasks normally delegated to Java and C++. With Perl Best Practices, Damian shows specifically how and why, so everyone else can see, too." -- Andy Lester"Damian's done what many thought impossible: show how to build large, maintainable Perl applications, while still letting Perl be the powerful, expressive language that programmers have loved for years." -- Bill Odom"Finally, a means to bring lasting order to the process and product of real Perl development teams." -- Andrew Sundstrom"Perl Best Practices provides a valuable education in how to write robust, maintainable P

A Software Engineer Learns HTML5, JavaScript and jQuery


Dane Cameron - 2013
    Due to their monopoly position in web browsers, and the fact web browsers have spread from PCs to phones, tablets and TVs; their status will continue to grow and grow. Despite their success, many software engineers are apprehensive about JavaScript and HTML. This apprehensiveness is not completely unfounded; both JavaScript and HTML were rushed in their early years, and driven by commercial rather than engineering interests. As a result, many dubious features crept into these languages. Due to backwards compatibility concerns, most of these features still remain. In addition, many software engineers have used these languages without ever learning them. JavaScript and HTML have low barriers to entry, and this, along with their similarity to other languages, led many software engineers to conclude that there really was nothing much to learn. If you have not used JavaScript and HTML for a number of years, or if you are a programmer or software engineer using other languages, you may be surprised at what they now offer. Browser based web applications are now capable of matching or exceeding the sophistication and scale of traditional desktop applications. In order to create complex web applications however, it is essential to learn these languages. This book takes the point of view that once you have a strong grasp of the fundamentals, the details will take care of themselves. It will not present you with long lists of APIs, or intricate details of every attribute, these can be found in reference manuals. It will focus on the details of each language that are fundamental to understanding how they work. This book will guide you through the process of developing a web application using HTML5, Javascript, jQuery and CSS. It contains the following content: 1. An introduction to the HTML5 markup language, and how it differs from HTML4 and XHTML. 2. An introduction to JavaScript, including an in-depth look at its use of objects and functions, along with the design patterns that support the development of robust web applications. 3. An introduction to jQuery selection, traversal, manipulation and events. 4. An in-depth look at the Web storage and IndexedDB APIs for client side data storage. 5. A guide to implementing offline web applications with the Application Cache API. 6. An introduction to the ways JavaScript can interact with the users file-system using the FileReader API. 7. The use of Web Workers in a web application to execute algorithms on background threads. 8. An introduction to AJAX, and the jQuery API supporting AJAX. 9. An introduction to Server Sent Events and Web Sockets. All subjects are introduced in the context of a sample web application. This book is intended for anyone with at least a superficial knowledge of HTML and programming.

Programming Collective Intelligence: Building Smart Web 2.0 Applications


Toby Segaran - 2002
    With the sophisticated algorithms in this book, you can write smart programs to access interesting datasets from other web sites, collect data from users of your own applications, and analyze and understand the data once you've found it.Programming Collective Intelligence takes you into the world of machine learning and statistics, and explains how to draw conclusions about user experience, marketing, personal tastes, and human behavior in general -- all from information that you and others collect every day. Each algorithm is described clearly and concisely with code that can immediately be used on your web site, blog, Wiki, or specialized application. This book explains:Collaborative filtering techniques that enable online retailers to recommend products or media Methods of clustering to detect groups of similar items in a large dataset Search engine features -- crawlers, indexers, query engines, and the PageRank algorithm Optimization algorithms that search millions of possible solutions to a problem and choose the best one Bayesian filtering, used in spam filters for classifying documents based on word types and other features Using decision trees not only to make predictions, but to model the way decisions are made Predicting numerical values rather than classifications to build price models Support vector machines to match people in online dating sites Non-negative matrix factorization to find the independent features in a dataset Evolving intelligence for problem solving -- how a computer develops its skill by improving its own code the more it plays a game Each chapter includes exercises for extending the algorithms to make them more powerful. Go beyond simple database-backed applications and put the wealth of Internet data to work for you. "Bravo! I cannot think of a better way for a developer to first learn these algorithms and methods, nor can I think of a better way for me (an old AI dog) to reinvigorate my knowledge of the details."-- Dan Russell, Google "Toby's book does a great job of breaking down the complex subject matter of machine-learning algorithms into practical, easy-to-understand examples that can be directly applied to analysis of social interaction across the Web today. If I had this book two years ago, it would have saved precious time going down some fruitless paths."-- Tim Wolters, CTO, Collective Intellect

Two Scoops of Django: Best Practices for Django 1.5


Daniel Roy Greenfeld - 2013
    We'll introduce you to various tips, tricks, patterns, code snippets, and techniques that we've picked up over the years.This book is great for:Beginners who have just finished the Django tutorial.Developers with intermediate knowledge of Django who want to improve their Django projects.

Algorithms


Sanjoy Dasgupta - 2006
    Emphasis is placed on understanding the crisp mathematical idea behind each algorithm, in a manner that is intuitive and rigorous without being unduly formal. Features include: The use of boxes to strengthen the narrative: pieces that provide historical context, descriptions of how the algorithms are used in practice, and excursions for the mathematically sophisticated.Carefully chosen advanced topics that can be skipped in a standard one-semester course, but can be covered in an advanced algorithms course or in a more leisurely two-semester sequence.An accessible treatment of linear programming introduces students to one of the greatest achievements in algorithms. An optional chapter on the quantum algorithm for factoring provides a unique peephole into this exciting topic. In addition to the text, DasGupta also offers a Solutions Manual, which is available on the Online Learning Center.Algorithms is an outstanding undergraduate text, equally informed by the historical roots and contemporary applications of its subject. Like a captivating novel, it is a joy to read. Tim Roughgarden Stanford University

Data and Reality


William Kent - 1978
    

Debugging: The 9 Indispensable Rules for Finding Even the Most Elusive Software and Hardware Problems


David J. Agans - 2002
    Written in a frank but engaging style, Debuggingprovides simple, foolproof principles guaranteed to help find any bug quickly. This book makes those shelves of application-specific debugging books (on C++, Perl, Java, etc.) obsolete. It changes the way readers think about debugging, making those pesky problems suddenly much easier to find and fix. Illustrating the rules with real-life bug-detection war stories, the book shows readers how to: * Understand the system: how perceiving the ""roadmap"" can hasten your journey * Quit thinking and look: when hands-on investigation can’t be avoided * Isolate critical factors: why changing one element at a time can be an essential tool * Keep an audit trail: how keeping a record of the debugging process can win the day

Web Operations: Keeping the Data on Time


John Allspaw - 2010
    It's the expertise you need when your start-up gets an unexpected spike in web traffic, or when a new feature causes your mature application to fail. In this collection of essays and interviews, web veterans such as Theo Schlossnagle, Baron Schwartz, and Alistair Croll offer insights into this evolving field. You'll learn stories from the trenches--from builders of some of the biggest sites on the Web--on what's necessary to help a site thrive.Learn the skills needed in web operations, and why they're gained through experience rather than schoolingUnderstand why it's important to gather metrics from both your application and infrastructureConsider common approaches to database architectures and the pitfalls that come with increasing scaleLearn how to handle the human side of outages and degradationsFind out how one company avoided disaster after a huge traffic delugeDiscover what went wrong after a problem occurs, and how to prevent it from happening againContributors include:John AllspawHeather ChampMichael ChristianRichard CookAlistair CrollPatrick DeboisEric FlorenzanoPaul HammondJustin HuffAdam JacobJacob LoomisMatt MassieBrian MoonAnoop NagwaniSean PowerEric RiesTheo SchlossnagleBaron SchwartzAndrew Shafer

Functional Programming in Scala


Rúnar Bjarnason - 2013
    As a result, functional code is easier to test and reuse, simpler to parallelize, and less prone to bugs. Scala is an emerging JVM language that offers strong support for FP. Its familiar syntax and transparent interoperability with existing Java libraries make Scala a great place to start learning FP.Functional Programming in Scala is a serious tutorial for programmers looking to learn FP and apply it to the everyday business of coding. The book guides readers from basic techniques to advanced topics in a logical, concise, and clear progression. In it, they'll find concrete examples and exercises that open up the world of functional programming.Purchase of the print book comes with an offer of a free PDF, ePub, and Kindle eBook from Manning. Also available is all code from the book.

RESTful Web APIs


Leonard Richardson - 2013
    With this practical guide, you’ll learn what it takes to design usable REST APIs that evolve over time. By focusing on solutions that cross a variety of domains, this book shows you how to create powerful and secure applications, using the tools designed for the world’s most successful distributed computing system: the World Wide Web.You’ll explore the concepts behind REST, learn different strategies for creating hypermedia-based APIs, and then put everything together with a step-by-step guide to designing a RESTful Web API.Examine API design strategies, including the collection pattern and pure hypermediaUnderstand how hypermedia ties representations together into a coherent APIDiscover how XMDP and ALPS profile formats can help you meet the Web API "semantic challenge"Learn close to two-dozen standardized hypermedia data formatsApply best practices for using HTTP in API implementationsCreate Web APIs with the JSON-LD standard and other the Linked Data approachesUnderstand the CoAP protocol for using REST in embedded systems