Software Design, Testing & Engineering Books - Page 5

Agile Estimating and Planning (Robert C. Martin Series)

Mike Cohn

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 45 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

This is the eBook version of the printed book. Detailed, Proven Techniques for Estimating and Planning Any Agile Project. Agile Estimating and Planning is the definitive, practical guide to estimating and planning agile projects. In this book, Agile Alliance cofounder Mike Cohn discusses the philosophy of agile estimating and planning and shows you exactly how to get the job done, with real-world examples and case studies. Concepts are clearly illustrated and readers are guided, step by step, toward how to answer the following questions: What will we build? How big will it be? When must it be done? How much can I really complete by then? You will first learn what makes a good plan-and then what makes it agile.Using the techniques in Agile Estimating and Planning, you can stay agile from start to finish, saving time, conserving resources, and accomplishing more. Highlights include:- Why conventional prescriptive planning fails and why agile planning works- How to estimate feature size using story points and ideal days-and when to use each- How and when to re-estimate- How to prioritize features using both financial and nonfinancial approaches- How to split large features into smaller, more manageable ones- How to plan iterations and predict your team's initial rate of progress- How to schedule projects that have unusually high uncertainty or schedule-related risk- How to estimate projects that will be worked on by multiple teamsAgile Estimating and Planning supports any agile, semiagile, or iterative process, including Scrum, XP, Feature-Driven Development, Crystal, Adaptive Software Development, DSDM, Unified Process, and many more. It will be an indispensable resource for every development manager, team leader, and team member.

Upgrade Your Life: The Lifehacker Guide to Working Smarter, Faster, Better

Gina Trapani

Amazon Price: $19.79 List Price: $29.99 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Wiley Amazon Marketplace: 53 new & used starting at $13.85

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 16 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

The second edition is just as good as the first... 5 out of 5 stars.
7 of 7 people found this review helpful.

I remember reading the first edition of Gina Trapani's Upgrade Your Life: The Lifehacker Guide to Working Smarter, Faster, Better and thinking how wonderful it was. Of course, when the second edition came out, I had to get that one too. And as with the first one, I have all sorts of post-it notes scattered throughout the book for reference and "go back and try this" notes. Well worth the time and money you spend here.

Contents:
Control Your Email; Organize Your Data; Trick Yourself into Getting Done; Clear Your Mind; Firewall Your Attention; Streamline Common Tasks; Automate Repetitive Tasks; Get Your Data To Go; Master The Web; Hone Your Computer Survival Skills; Manage Multiple Computers; Index

Over the span of the chapters above, Trapani presents 116 different "hacks" that you can incorporate into your daily computer life to, well... work smarter, faster, and better. As with most books that are a compilation of different tips, some will resonate strongly with your current needs, while others are skimming material that may not be relevant. For instance, the hacks in the first chapter, Organize Your Data, hit home. I'm working towards consolidating multiple email addresses with Gmail, and I'm cutting down the number of folders I have, relying on search to find what I need. Master The Web also had some cool tricks, like having multiple home pages in Firefox and using Google Notebook for web clippings. I wasn't quite into the Managing Multiple Computers as much, as my current setup doesn't call for that. Still, it's good information to have around should you need it at a later time.

I actually found a couple different things occurring as I read through the material. There were hacks where some software was presented that did a certain task, and I'd realize I've been looking for something just like that. Similar to scratching an itch that you couldn't quite reach. Then there were the hacks that opened your eyes to whole areas you didn't even know you needed. Let's call that finding AND scratching the itch you didn't know you had five minutes prior. After going through some of the Automate Repetitive Tasks hacks, I have started to look at a lot of things I do with a view towards eliminating the manual repetitive effort that I just accepted as necessary before.

I highly recommend this book to everyone who spends most of their waking hours in front of a computer, and/or earn their living in front of one. Taking away even a small handful of nuggets can radically change the way you do things.

Editorial Review:

Whether youre a Mac or Windows user, there are tricks here for you in this helpful resource. Youll feast on this buffet of new shortcuts to make technology your ally instead of your adversary, so you can spend more time getting things done and less time fiddling with your computer. Youll learn valuable ways to upgrade your life so that you can workand livemore efficiently, such as: empty your e-mail inbox, search the Web in three keystrokes, securely save Web site passwords, automatically back up your files, and many more.

Pro ASP.NET 3.5 in C# 2008, Second Edition (Windows.Net)

Matthew MacDonald, Mario Szpuszta

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 21 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

ASP.NET 3.5 is the latest version of Microsoft’s revolutionary ASP.NET technology. It is the principal standard for creating dynamic web pages on the Windows platform. Pro ASP.NET 3.5 in C# 2008 raises the bar for high–quality, practical advice on learning and deploying Microsoft’s dynamic web solution.

Seasoned .NET professionals Matthew MacDonald and Mario Szpuszta explain how you can get the most from this groundbreaking new technology. They cover ASP.NET 3.5 as a whole, illustrating both the brand–new features and the functionality carried over from previous versions of ASP. This book will give you the knowledge you need to code real ASP.NET 3.5 applications in the best possible style.

The book will teach you ASP.NET 3.5 starting with core concepts to more advanced topics. You will learn

• Core concepts of ASP.NET 3.5. Why it’s special. What it’s fundamental principals are. The basics of Visual Studio. How ASP.NET 3.5 controls are created, and how they fit into ASP.NET 3.5 pages, ultimately creating full applications
• Data access details. The intricacies of ADO.NET and how to perform data binding to many sources from databases to file streams to XML. We include LINQ coverage so you’re on the bleeding edge
• Security. Once considered the Achilles heel of all Windows web applications, security has vastly improved and is a cornerstone of ASP.NET 3.5. This section explains the various forms of available security, and how to best apply them
• Taking things further using advanced user interface techniques. This includes user controls, customer server controls, client–side JavaScript, and GDI+.
• Web services. In an increasingly connected world, working with web services grows in importance. This book will show you how to work with them.
• ASP.NET AJAX, with an emphasis on comtemporary web development techniques
• Development using Internet Information Services 7, Microsoft’s premier web hosting platform.
• And much more.

Mastering Regular Expressions

Jeffrey Friedl

Amazon Price: $29.69 List Price: $44.99 Usually ships in 24 hours By: O'Reilly Media, Inc. Amazon Marketplace: 53 new & used starting at $22.99

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 125 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Very in-depth 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Quite a comprehensive guide to regular expressions. Gets very detailed in the areas that it covers. However, definitely not a 'beginner's guide'. I highly recommend that you are already comfortable with the basis of regular expressions before picking up this book. You will get way more out of it if this is not your first introduction to it. Comfort and proficiency with Perl would also be a big help. Title is correct though, this is a guide to 'mastering' regular expressions, not learning them from the beginning.

Editorial Review:

Regular expressions are a central element of UNIX utilities like egrep and programming languages such as Perl. But whether you're a UNIX user or not, you can benefit from a better understanding of regular expressions since they work with applications ranging from validating data-entry fields to manipulating information in multimegabyte text files. Mastering Regular Expressions quickly covers the basics of regular-expression syntax, then delves into the mechanics of expression-processing, common pitfalls, performance issues, and implementation-specific differences. Written in an engaging style and sprinkled with solutions to complex real-world problems, Mastering Regular Expressions offers a wealth information that you can put to immediate use.

Learning OpenCV: Computer Vision with the OpenCV Library

Gary Bradski, Adrian Kaehler

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Learning OpenCV puts you right in the middle of the rapidly expanding field of computer vision. Written by the creators of OpenCV, the widely used free open-source library, this book introduces you to computer vision and demonstrates how you can quickly build applications that enable computers to "see" and make decisions based on the data. Computer vision is everywhere -- in security systems, manufacturing inspection systems, medical image analysis, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, and more. It helps robot cars drive by themselves, stitches Google maps and Google Earth together, checks the pixels on your laptop's LCD screen, and makes sure the stitches in your shirt are OK. OpenCV provides an easy-to-use computer vision infrastructure along with a comprehensive library containing more than 500 functions that can run vision code in real time. With Learning OpenCV, any developer or hobbyist can get up and running with the framework quickly, whether it's to build simple or sophisticated vision applications. The book includes: A thorough introduction to OpenCV Getting input from cameras Transforming images Shape matching Pattern recognition, including face detection Segmenting images Tracking and motion in 2 and 3 dimensions Machine learning algorithms

Hands-on exercises at the end of each chapter help you absorb the concepts, and an appendix explains how to set up an OpenCV project in Visual Studio. OpenCV is written in performance optimized C/C++ code, runs on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X, and is free for commercial and research use under a BSD license. Getting machines to see is a challenging but entertaining goal. If you're intrigued by the possibilities, Learning OpenCV gets you started onbuilding computer vision applications of your own.

The Ruby Programming Language

David Flanagan, Yukihiro Matsumoto

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 19 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The Ruby Programming Language is the authoritative guide to Ruby and provides comprehensive coverage of versions 1.8 and 1.9 of the language. It was written (and illustrated!) by an all-star team: David Flanagan, bestselling author of programming language "bibles" (including JavaScript: The Definitive Guide and Java in a Nutshell) and committer to the Ruby Subversion repository. Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto, creator, designer and lead developer of Ruby and author of Ruby in a Nutshell, which has been expanded and revised to become this book. why the lucky stiff, artist and Ruby programmer extraordinaire. This book begins with a quick-start tutorial to the language, and then explains the language in detail from the bottom up: from lexical and syntactic structure to datatypes to expressions and statements and on through methods, blocks, lambdas, closures, classes and modules. The book also includes a long and thorough introduction to the rich API of the Ruby platform, demonstrating -- with heavily-commented example code -- Ruby's facilities for text processing, numeric manipulation, collections, input/output, networking, and concurrency. An entire chapter is devoted to Ruby's metaprogramming capabilities. The Ruby Programming Language documents the Ruby language definitively but without the formality of a language specification. It is written for experienced programmers who are new to Ruby, and for current Ruby programmers who want to challenge their understanding and increase their mastery of the language.

Agile Software Development with Scrum (Series in Agile Software Development)

Ken Schwaber, Mike Beedle

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 40 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Good but not great 2 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

This is a good book with lots of valuable information around the empirical nature of Scrum. For someone who was central to creating Scrum, the book doesn't offer much more.

It's broken up into three parts: Overview of Scrum / Why it works / Case studies.

The overview of Scrum is poor at best. There are much simpler ways to communicate it. If you don't know anything about Scrum then this book probably won't help get you started.

The "Why it works" chapters were much more interesting and valuable. It takes you through the epirical nature of scrum and why previous methodologies have failed. The most interesting part is the brief exposition around the psychological, anthropological and systematical viewpoints around Scrum. Like much of the book, this could have been written better and with more indepth information, but still meets a basic need.

The case studies and ancillary information in the last few chapters feel hasty and are of little value. Many of the examples (although based on actual events) feel contrived and are simplified so much that they aren't highly illuminating.

Overall the book wasn't the greatest but it did provide me with some value. The editing is quite poor and there are numerous mistakes throughout. The general layout of the page is also problematic and makes it difficult to read.

Most laughable however are the images and graphics. They look like they were made in MSPaint and screen capped into the book.

MCSE Self-Paced Training Kit (Exams 70-290, 70-291, 70-293, 70-294): Microsoft® Windows Server(TM) 2003 Core Requirements, Second Edition

Dan Holme, Orin Thomas, J.C. Mackin, Ian McLean, Craig Zacker

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 24 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Get in-depth training and practice with the skills measured by the core exams for MCSE certification for Windows Server 2003—all in one box! Covering Exams 70-290, 70-291, 70-293, and 70-294, these four, all-new Microsoft study guides pack the tools and features that exam candidates want most—including in-depth, self-paced training based on final exam content; rigorous, objective-by-objective reviews; exam tips from expert, exam-certified authors; and a robust testing suite. They also provide real-world scenarios, case study examples, and troubleshooting labs for skills and experience that you can apply to the job.

Ace your exam preparation and ramp up quickly on Windows Server 2003 by working at your own pace through the lessons, hands-on exercises, and practice tests. The flexible, best-of-class test engine on CD features 300 practice questions per exam and pre-assessment and post-assessment capabilities. Choose timed or untimed testing mode, generate random tests, or focus on discrete objectives or chapters, and get detailed explanations for right and wrong answers—including pointers back to the book for further study. You also get a 120-day evaluation version of Windows Server 2003 and a 15 percent exam discount voucher good toward all four exams—making this kit an exceptional value and a great career investment.

Core Animation for Mac OS X and the iPhone: Creating Compelling Dynamic User Interfaces (Pragmatic Programmers)

Bill Dudney

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 3.0 of 5

Rich content for begginers 3 out of 5 stars.
3 of 4 people found this review helpful.

This book is a good choice for people who has knowledge of Objective-C, but has no knowledge of CoreAnimation. This is because this book explains the samples it has inside of it but explains it assuming you know Objective-C.
The sample codes are very clear and the way the author wrote the book makes it very easy to understand.
There is a thing I don't like it very much. There are many of the Figures and Graphs that are too way big!. I wish I could have instead of such a big figures maybe a more detailed information, or just saving some pages would be OK. I don't think they did a good use of the space. But the content is OK.
Another thing is ... Even tough CoreAnimation API is not mac OS X or iPhone OS exclusive I was expecting more iPhone samples (As the title might suggest). Yeah, the principle is the same but I was just a little bit disappointed when realizing "only 12 pages out of 182" are exclusive dedicated to iPhone - CoreAudio programming.

Editorial Review:

Mac OS X Leopard introduces a fantastic new technology that makes writing applications with animated and cinematic user interfaces much easier. We'll explore this new technology by starting with the familiar concepts you already know from the pre-Leopard development kits.

Then we'll see how they apply to the new frameworks and APIs. We'll build on your existing knowledge of Cocoa and bring you efficiently up to speed on what Core Animation is all about.

With this book in hand, you can add Core Animation to your Cocoa applications, and make stunning user interfaces that your user's will be showing off to their friends.

Learning Perl, 5th Edition

Randal Schwartz, Tom Phoenix, brian d foy

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 292 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Irritating comments 3 out of 5 stars.
2 of 4 people found this review helpful.

The book is irritating. (-2 star) I keep wasting my time looking for every little star, cross, double cross, ... symbol in the text. Almost every page has comments at the bottom, and these comments are denoted by tiny symbols. I'd like to see the authors find all the text that goes with all those comments. They really need to listen to their own advice and write the book for people who will be reading it.
The book is incomplete. (-1 star) The authors keep mentioning things that will be discussed later or not at all. I have to look for the topics on the Internet to get an explanation.
The book uses terms without fully explaining them. A beginner would not understand the terms without looking them up on the Internet. (-1 star)
The book covers some interesting syntax rules. (+1 star)
The book gives exceptions to the rules. (+1 star)
The book is up-to-date. (+1 star)
The book gives fully contained examples (+1 star)

Editorial Review:

In this smooth, carefully paced course, a leading Perl trainer teaches you to program in the language that threatens to make C, sed, awk, and the Unix shell obsolete for many tasks. This book is the "official" guide for both formal (classroom) and informal learning. It is fully accessible to the novice programmer.