Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software


Charles Petzold - 1999
    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.

HTML and CSS: Design and Build Websites


Jon Duckett - 2011
    Joining the professional web designers and programmers are new audiences who need to know a little bit of code at work (update a content management system or e-commerce store) and those who want to make their personal blogs more attractive. Many books teaching HTML and CSS are dry and only written for those who want to become programmers, which is why this book takes an entirely new approach. • Introduces HTML and CSS in a way that makes them accessible to everyone—hobbyists, students, and professionals—and it’s full-color throughout • Utilizes information graphics and lifestyle photography to explain the topics in a simple way that is engaging • Boasts a unique structure that allows you to progress through the chapters from beginning to end or just dip into topics of particular interest at your leisureThis educational book is one that you will enjoy picking up, reading, then referring back to. It will make you wish other technical topics were presented in such a simple, attractive and engaging way!

Building Microservices: Designing Fine-Grained Systems


Sam Newman - 2014
    But developing these systems brings its own set of headaches. With lots of examples and practical advice, this book takes a holistic view of the topics that system architects and administrators must consider when building, managing, and evolving microservice architectures.Microservice technologies are moving quickly. Author Sam Newman provides you with a firm grounding in the concepts while diving into current solutions for modeling, integrating, testing, deploying, and monitoring your own autonomous services. You'll follow a fictional company throughout the book to learn how building a microservice architecture affects a single domain.Discover how microservices allow you to align your system design with your organization's goalsLearn options for integrating a service with the rest of your systemTake an incremental approach when splitting monolithic codebasesDeploy individual microservices through continuous integrationExamine the complexities of testing and monitoring distributed servicesManage security with user-to-service and service-to-service modelsUnderstand the challenges of scaling microservice architectures

OpenGL Programming Guide: The Official Guide to Learning OpenGL, Version 2


Dave Shreiner - 1999
    The OpenGL Programming Guide provides definitive and comprehensive information on OpenGL and the OpenGL Utility Library. It is far and away the most important book on OpenGL, and is commonly referred to by programmers simply as the Red book. Last summer the OpenGL Architectural Review Board (ARB) announced the release of the version 2.0 standard, incorporating the OpenGL Shader Language (GLSL) officially into the spec. This is the biggest change in OpenGL since its inception. This new edition will provide basic information about GLSL itself, as well as all the other changes to the 1.5 and 1.0 versions. the official, comprehensive guide to GLSL itself. A few years ago, pundits were predicting the imminent demise of OpenGL. Far from expiring, however, OpenGL has had a resurgence in the last couple years, and has solidified its position as the defacto standard for high-quality computer graphics. This book remains the necessary guide for any developer doing graphics programming. The sample source code in the book will be available on the book's web site.

Think Stats


Allen B. Downey - 2011
    This concise introduction shows you how to perform statistical analysis computationally, rather than mathematically, with programs written in Python.You'll work with a case study throughout the book to help you learn the entire data analysis process—from collecting data and generating statistics to identifying patterns and testing hypotheses. Along the way, you'll become familiar with distributions, the rules of probability, visualization, and many other tools and concepts.Develop your understanding of probability and statistics by writing and testing codeRun experiments to test statistical behavior, such as generating samples from several distributionsUse simulations to understand concepts that are hard to grasp mathematicallyLearn topics not usually covered in an introductory course, such as Bayesian estimationImport data from almost any source using Python, rather than be limited to data that has been cleaned and formatted for statistics toolsUse statistical inference to answer questions about real-world data

The Art of Electronics


Paul Horowitz - 1980
    Widely accepted as the authoritative text and reference on electronic circuit design, both analog and digital, this book revolutionized the teaching of electronics by emphasizing the methods actually used by circuit designers -- a combination of some basic laws, rules of thumb, and a large bag of tricks. The result is a largely nonmathematical treatment that encourages circuit intuition, brainstorming, and simplified calculations of circuit values and performance. The new Art of Electronics retains the feeling of informality and easy access that helped make the first edition so successful and popular. It is an ideal first textbook on electronics for scientists and engineers and an indispensable reference for anyone, professional or amateur, who works with electronic circuits.

Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs


Harold Abelson - 1984
    This long-awaited revision contains changes throughout the text. There are new implementations of most of the major programming systems in the book, including the interpreters and compilers, and the authors have incorporated many small changes that reflect their experience teaching the course at MIT since the first edition was published. A new theme has been introduced that emphasizes the central role played by different approaches to dealing with time in computational models: objects with state, concurrent programming, functional programming and lazy evaluation, and nondeterministic programming. There are new example sections on higher-order procedures in graphics and on applications of stream processing in numerical programming, and many new exercises. In addition, all the programs have been reworked to run in any Scheme implementation that adheres to the IEEE standard.

Don't Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability


Steve Krug - 2000
    And it’s still short, profusely illustrated…and best of all–fun to read.If you’ve read it before, you’ll rediscover what made Don’t Make Me Think so essential to Web designers and developers around the world. If you’ve never read it, you’ll see why so many people have said it should be required reading for anyone working on Web sites.

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

Automate the Boring Stuff with Python: Practical Programming for Total Beginners


Al Sweigart - 2014
    But what if you could have your computer do them for you?In "Automate the Boring Stuff with Python," you'll learn how to use Python to write programs that do in minutes what would take you hours to do by hand no prior programming experience required. Once you've mastered the basics of programming, you'll create Python programs that effortlessly perform useful and impressive feats of automation to: Search for text in a file or across multiple filesCreate, update, move, and rename files and foldersSearch the Web and download online contentUpdate and format data in Excel spreadsheets of any sizeSplit, merge, watermark, and encrypt PDFsSend reminder emails and text notificationsFill out online formsStep-by-step instructions walk you through each program, and practice projects at the end of each chapter challenge you to improve those programs and use your newfound skills to automate similar tasks.Don't spend your time doing work a well-trained monkey could do. Even if you've never written a line of code, you can make your computer do the grunt work. Learn how in "Automate the Boring Stuff with Python.""

Land of LISP: Learn to Program in LISP, One Game at a Time!


Conrad Barski - 2010
    Land of Lisp brings the language into the real world, teaching Lisp by showing readers how to write several complete Lisp-based games, including a text adventure, an evolution simulation, and a robot battle. While building these games, readers learn the core concepts of Lisp programming, such as data types, recursion, input/output, object-oriented programming, and macros. And thanks to the power of Lisp, the code is short. Rather than bogging things down with reference information that is easily found online, Land of Lisp focuses on using Lisp for real programming. The book is filled with the author Conrad Barski's famous Lisp cartoons, featuring the Lisp alien and other zany characters.

Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach


Stuart Russell - 1994
    The long-anticipated revision of this best-selling text offers the most comprehensive, up-to-date introduction to the theory and practice of artificial intelligence. *NEW-Nontechnical learning material-Accompanies each part of the book. *NEW-The Internet as a sample application for intelligent systems-Added in several places including logical agents, planning, and natural language. *NEW-Increased coverage of material - Includes expanded coverage of: default reasoning and truth maintenance systems, including multi-agent/distributed AI and game theory; probabilistic approaches to learning including EM; more detailed descriptions of probabilistic inference algorithms. *NEW-Updated and expanded exercises-75% of the exercises are revised, with 100 new exercises. *NEW-On-line Java software. *Makes it easy for students to do projects on the web using intelligent agents. *A unified, agent-based approach to AI-Organizes the material around the task of building intelligent agents. *Comprehensive, up-to-date coverage-Includes a unified view of the field organized around the rational decision making pa

Cryptography Engineering: Design Principles and Practical Applications


Niels Ferguson - 2010
    Cryptography is vital to keeping information safe, in an era when the formula to do so becomes more and more challenging. Written by a team of world-renowned cryptography experts, this essential guide is the definitive introduction to all major areas of cryptography: message security, key negotiation, and key management. You'll learn how to think like a cryptographer. You'll discover techniques for building cryptography into products from the start and you'll examine the many technical changes in the field.After a basic overview of cryptography and what it means today, this indispensable resource covers such topics as block ciphers, block modes, hash functions, encryption modes, message authentication codes, implementation issues, negotiation protocols, and more. Helpful examples and hands-on exercises enhance your understanding of the multi-faceted field of cryptography.An author team of internationally recognized cryptography experts updates you on vital topics in the field of cryptography Shows you how to build cryptography into products from the start Examines updates and changes to cryptography Includes coverage on key servers, message security, authentication codes, new standards, block ciphers, message authentication codes, and more Cryptography Engineering gets you up to speed in the ever-evolving field of cryptography.

Computer Organization & Design: The Hardware/Software Interface


David A. Patterson - 1993
    More importantly, this book provides a framework for thinking about computer organization and design that will enable the reader to continue the lifetime of learning necessary for staying at the forefront of this competitive discipline. --John Crawford Intel Fellow Director of Microprocessor Architecture, Intel The performance of software systems is dramatically affected by how well software designers understand the basic hardware technologies at work in a system. Similarly, hardware designers must understand the far reaching effects their design decisions have on software applications. For readers in either category, this classic introduction to the field provides a deep look into the computer. It demonstrates the relationship between the software and hardware and focuses on the foundational concepts that are the basis for current computer design. Using a distinctive learning by evolution approach the authors present each idea from its first principles, guiding readers through a series of worked examples that incrementally add more complex instructions until they ha

Code Complete


Steve McConnell - 1993
    Now this classic book has been fully updated and revised with leading-edge practices--and hundreds of new code samples--illustrating the art and science of software construction. Capturing the body of knowledge available from research, academia, and everyday commercial practice, McConnell synthesizes the most effective techniques and must-know principles into clear, pragmatic guidance. No matter what your experience level, development environment, or project size, this book will inform and stimulate your thinking--and help you build the highest quality code. Discover the timeless techniques and strategies that help you: Design for minimum complexity and maximum creativity Reap the benefits of collaborative development Apply defensive programming techniques to reduce and flush out errors Exploit opportunities to refactor--or evolve--code, and do it safely Use construction practices that are right-weight for your project Debug problems quickly and effectively Resolve critical construction issues early and correctly Build quality into the beginning, middle, and end of your project