How Software Works

Author: V. Anton Spraul
Publisher: No Starch Press
ISBN: 1593276664
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 217

Book Description
We use software every day to perform all kinds of magical, powerful tasks. It's the force behind stunning CGI graphics, safe online shopping, and speedy Google searches. Software drives the modern world, but its inner workings remain a mystery to many. How Software Works explains how computers perform common-yet-amazing tasks that we take for granted every day. Inside you'll learn: –How data is encrypted –How passwords are used and protected –How computer graphics are created –How video is compressed for streaming and storage –How data is searched (and found) in huge databases –How programs can work together on the same problem without conflict –How data travels over the Internet How Software Works breaks down these processes with patient explanations and intuitive diagrams so that anyone can understand—no technical background is required, and you won't be reading through any code. In plain English, you'll examine the intricate logic behind the technologies you constantly use but never understood. If you've ever wondered what really goes on behind your computer screen, How Software Works will give you fascinating look into the software all around you.

Making Software

Author: Andy Oram
Publisher: "O'Reilly Media, Inc."
ISBN: 144939776X
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 624

Book Description
Many claims are made about how certain tools, technologies, and practices improve software development. But which claims are verifiable, and which are merely wishful thinking? In this book, leading thinkers such as Steve McConnell, Barry Boehm, and Barbara Kitchenham offer essays that uncover the truth and unmask myths commonly held among the software development community. Their insights may surprise you. Are some programmers really ten times more productive than others? Does writing tests first help you develop better code faster? Can code metrics predict the number of bugs in a piece of software? Do design patterns actually make better software? What effect does personality have on pair programming? What matters more: how far apart people are geographically, or how far apart they are in the org chart? Contributors include: Jorge Aranda Tom Ball Victor R. Basili Andrew Begel Christian Bird Barry Boehm Marcelo Cataldo Steven Clarke Jason Cohen Robert DeLine Madeline Diep Hakan Erdogmus Michael Godfrey Mark Guzdial Jo E. Hannay Ahmed E. Hassan Israel Herraiz Kim Sebastian Herzig Cory Kapser Barbara Kitchenham Andrew Ko Lucas Layman Steve McConnell Tim Menzies Gail Murphy Nachi Nagappan Thomas J. Ostrand Dewayne Perry Marian Petre Lutz Prechelt Rahul Premraj Forrest Shull Beth Simon Diomidis Spinellis Neil Thomas Walter Tichy Burak Turhan Elaine J. Weyuker Michele A. Whitecraft Laurie Williams Wendy M. Williams Andreas Zeller Thomas Zimmermann

Seriously Good Software

Author: Marco Faella
Publisher: Manning
ISBN: 1617296295
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 325

Book Description
Summary Serious developers know that code can always be improved. With each iteration, you make optimizations—small and large—that can have a huge impact on your application’s speed, size, resilience, and maintainability. In Seriously Good Software: Code that Works, Survives, and Wins, author, teacher, and Java expert Marco Faella teaches you techniques for writing better code. You’ll start with a simple application and follow it through seven careful refactorings, each designed to explore another dimension of quality. Purchase of the print book includes a free eBook in PDF, Kindle, and ePub formats from Manning Publications. About the technology Great code blends the skill of a programmer with the time-tested techniques and best practices embraced by the entire development community. Although each application has its own context and character, some dimensions of quality are always important. This book concentrates on seven pillars of seriously good software: speed, memory usage, reliability, readability, thread safety, generality, and elegance. The Java-based examples demonstrate techniques that apply to any OO language. About the book Seriously Good Software is a handbook for any professional developer serious about improving application quality. It explores fundamental dimensions of code quality by enhancing a simple implementation into a robust, professional-quality application. Questions, exercises, and Java-based examples ensure you’ll get a firm grasp of the concepts as you go. When you finish the last version of the book’s central project, you’ll be able to confidently choose the right optimizations for your code. What's inside Evaluating software qualities Assessing trade-offs and interactions Fulfilling different objectives in a single task Java-based exercises you can apply in any OO language About the reader For developers with basic object-oriented programming skills and intermediate Java skills. About the author Marco Faella teaches advanced programming at a major Italian university. His published work includes peer-reviewed research articles, a Java certification manual, and a video course. Table of Contents *Part 1: Preliminaries * 1 Software qualities and a problem to solve 2 Reference implementation *Part 2: Software Qualities* 3 Need for speed: Time efficiency 4 Precious memory: Space efficiency 5 Self-conscious code: Reliability through monitoring 6 Lie to me: Reliability through testing 7 Coding aloud: Readability 8 Many cooks in the kitchen: Thread safety 9 Please recycle: Reusability

Embedded Software

Author: Colin Walls
Publisher: Elsevier
ISBN: 0124159699
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 436

Book Description
As the embedded world expands, developers must have a strong grasp of many complex topics in order to make faster, more efficient and more powerful microprocessors to meet the public's growing demand. Embedded Software: The Works covers all the key subjects embedded engineers need to understand in order to succeed, including Design and Development, Programming, Languages including C/C++, and UML, Real Time Operating Systems Considerations, Networking, and much more. New material on Linux, Android, and multi-core gives engineers the up-to-date practical know-how they need in order to succeed. Colin Walls draws upon his experience and insights from working in the industry, and covers the complete cycle of embedded software development: its design, development, management, debugging procedures, licensing, and reuse. For those new to the field, or for experienced engineers looking to expand their skills, Walls provides the reader with detailed tips and techniques, and rigorous explanations of technologies. Key features include: - New chapters on Linux, Android, and multi-core – the cutting edge of embedded software development! - Introductory roadmap guides readers through the book, providing a route through the separate chapters and showing how they are linked About the Author Colin Walls has over twenty-five years experience in the electronics industry, largely dedicated to embedded software. A frequent presenter at conferences and seminars and author of numerous technical articles and two books on embedded software, he is a member of the marketing team of the Mentor Graphics Embedded Software Division. He writes a regular blog on the Mentor website (blogs.mentor.com/colinwalls). - New chapters on Linux, Android, and multi-core – the cutting edge of embedded software development! - Introductory roadmap guides readers through the book, providing a route through the separate chapters and showing how they are linked

Modern Software Engineering

Author: David Farley
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
ISBN: 0137314868
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 479

Book Description
Improve Your Creativity, Effectiveness, and Ultimately, Your Code In Modern Software Engineering, continuous delivery pioneer David Farley helps software professionals think about their work more effectively, manage it more successfully, and genuinely improve the quality of their applications, their lives, and the lives of their colleagues. Writing for programmers, managers, and technical leads at all levels of experience, Farley illuminates durable principles at the heart of effective software development. He distills the discipline into two core exercises: learning and exploration and managing complexity. For each, he defines principles that can help you improve everything from your mindset to the quality of your code, and describes approaches proven to promote success. Farley's ideas and techniques cohere into a unified, scientific, and foundational approach to solving practical software development problems within realistic economic constraints. This general, durable, and pervasive approach to software engineering can help you solve problems you haven't encountered yet, using today's technologies and tomorrow's. It offers you deeper insight into what you do every day, helping you create better software, faster, with more pleasure and personal fulfillment. Clarify what you're trying to accomplish Choose your tools based on sensible criteria Organize work and systems to facilitate continuing incremental progress Evaluate your progress toward thriving systems, not just more "legacy code" Gain more value from experimentation and empiricism Stay in control as systems grow more complex Achieve rigor without too much rigidity Learn from history and experience Distinguish "good" new software development ideas from "bad" ones Register your book for convenient access to downloads, updates, and/or corrections as they become available. See inside book for details.

How Computers Really Work

Author: Matthew Justice
Publisher: No Starch Press
ISBN: 171850067X
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 394

Book Description
An approachable, hands-on guide to understanding how computers work, from low-level circuits to high-level code. How Computers Really Work is a hands-on guide to the computing ecosystem: everything from circuits to memory and clock signals, machine code, programming languages, operating systems, and the internet. But you won't just read about these concepts, you'll test your knowledge with exercises, and practice what you learn with 41 optional hands-on projects. Build digital circuits, craft a guessing game, convert decimal numbers to binary, examine virtual memory usage, run your own web server, and more. Explore concepts like how to: Think like a software engineer as you use data to describe a real world concept Use Ohm's and Kirchhoff's laws to analyze an electrical circuit Think like a computer as you practice binary addition and execute a program in your mind, step-by-step The book's projects will have you translate your learning into action, as you: Learn how to use a multimeter to measure resistance, current, and voltage Build a half adder to see how logical operations in hardware can be combined to perform useful functions Write a program in assembly language, then examine the resulting machine code Learn to use a debugger, disassemble code, and hack a program to change its behavior without changing the source code Use a port scanner to see which internet ports your computer has open Run your own server and get a solid crash course on how the web works And since a picture is worth a thousand bytes, chapters are filled with detailed diagrams and illustrations to help clarify technical complexities. Requirements: The projects require a variety of hardware - electronics projects need a breadboard, power supply, and various circuit components; software projects are performed on a Raspberry Pi. Appendix B contains a complete list. Even if you skip the projects, the book's major concepts are clearly presented in the main text.

Code

Author: Charles Petzold
Publisher: Microsoft Press
ISBN: 0137909292
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 563

Book Description
The classic guide to how computers work, updated with new chapters and interactive graphics "For me, Code was a revelation. It was the first book about programming that spoke to me. It started with a story, and it built up, layer by layer, analogy by analogy, until I understood not just the Code, but the System. Code is a book that is as much about Systems Thinking and abstractions as it is about code and programming. Code teaches us how many unseen layers there are between the computer systems that we as users look at every day and the magical silicon rocks that we infused with lightning and taught to think." - Scott Hanselman, Partner Program Director, Microsoft, and host of Hanselminutes Computers are everywhere, most obviously in our laptops and smartphones, but also our cars, televisions, microwave ovens, alarm clocks, robot vacuum cleaners, and other smart appliances. Have you ever wondered what goes on inside these devices to make our lives easier but occasionally more infuriating? For more than 20 years, readers have delighted in Charles Petzold's illuminating story of the secret inner life of computers, and now he has revised it for this new age of computing. Cleverly illustrated and easy to understand, this is the book that cracks the mystery. You'll discover what flashlights, black cats, seesaws, and the ride of Paul Revere can teach you about computing, and how human ingenuity and our compulsion to communicate have shaped every electronic device we use. This new expanded edition explores more deeply the bit-by-bit and gate-by-gate construction of the heart of every smart device, the central processing unit that combines the simplest of basic operations to perform the most complex of feats. Petzold's companion website, CodeHiddenLanguage.com, uses animated graphics of key circuits in the book to make computers even easier to comprehend. In addition to substantially revised and updated content, new chapters include: Chapter 18: Let's Build a Clock! Chapter 21: The Arithmetic Logic Unit Chapter 22: Registers and Busses Chapter 23: CPU Control Signals Chapter 24: Jumps, Loops, and Calls Chapter 28: The World Brain From the simple ticking of clocks to the worldwide hum of the internet, Code reveals the essence of the digital revolution.

A Philosophy of Software Design

Author: John K. Ousterhout
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781732102217
Category : Computer programs
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
"This book addresses the topic of software design: how to decompose complex software systems into modules (such as classes and methods) that can be implemented relatively independently. The book first introduces the fundamental problem in software design, which is managing complexity. It then discusses philosophical issues about how to approach the software design process and it presents a collection of design principles to apply during software design. The book also introduces a set of red flags that identify design problems. You can apply the ideas in this book to minimize the complexity of large software systems, so that you can write software more quickly and cheaply."--Amazon.

Software Engineering at Google

Author: Titus Winters
Publisher: O'Reilly Media
ISBN: 1492082767
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 602

Book Description
Today, software engineers need to know not only how to program effectively but also how to develop proper engineering practices to make their codebase sustainable and healthy. This book emphasizes this difference between programming and software engineering. How can software engineers manage a living codebase that evolves and responds to changing requirements and demands over the length of its life? Based on their experience at Google, software engineers Titus Winters and Hyrum Wright, along with technical writer Tom Manshreck, present a candid and insightful look at how some of the world’s leading practitioners construct and maintain software. This book covers Google’s unique engineering culture, processes, and tools and how these aspects contribute to the effectiveness of an engineering organization. You’ll explore three fundamental principles that software organizations should keep in mind when designing, architecting, writing, and maintaining code: How time affects the sustainability of software and how to make your code resilient over time How scale affects the viability of software practices within an engineering organization What trade-offs a typical engineer needs to make when evaluating design and development decisions

Software in 30 Days

Author: Ken Schwaber
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1118228545
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 216

Book Description
A radical approach to getting IT projects done faster andcheaper than anyone thinks possible Software in 30 Days summarizes the Agile and Scrumsoftware development method, which allows creation of game-changingsoftware, in just 30 days. Projects that use it are three timesmore successful than those that don't. Software in 30 Daysis for the business manager, the entrepreneur, the productdevelopment manager, or IT manager who wants to develop softwarebetter and faster than they now believe possible. Learn how thisunorthodox process works, how to get started, and how to succeed.Control risk, manage projects, and have your people succeed withsimple but profound shifts in the thinking. The authors explain powerful concepts such as the art of thepossible, bottom-up intelligence, and why it's good to failearly—all with no risk greater than thirty days. The productivity gain vs traditional "waterfall" methods hasbeen over 100% on many projects Author Ken Schwaber is a co-founder of the Agile softwaremovement, and co-creator, with Jeff Sutherland, of the "Scrum"technique for building software in 30 days Coauthor Jeff Sutherland was cosigner of the Agile Manifesto,which marked the start of the Agile movement Software in 30 Days is a must-read for all managers andbusiness owners who use software in their organizations or in theirproducts and want to stop the cycle of slow, expensive softwaredevelopment. Programmers will want to buy copies for their managersand their customers so they will know how to collaborate to get thebest work possible.