Performance Tools and Applications to Networked Systems: Revised Tutorial Lectures Review
Showing posts with label tools. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tools. Show all posts
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Code Leader: Using People, Tools, and Processes to Build Successful Software (Programmer to Programmer)
Code Leader: Using People, Tools, and Processes to Build Successful Software (Programmer to Programmer) Review
Code Leader: Using People, Tools, and Processes to Build Successful Software (Programmer to Programmer) Feature
This book is for the career developer who wants to take his or her skill set and/or project to the next level. If you are a professional software developer with 3–4 years of experience looking to bring a higher level of discipline to your project, or to learn the skills that will help you transition from software engineer to technical lead, then this book is for you. The topics covered in this book will help you focus on delivering software at a higher quality and lower cost. The book is about practical techniques and practices that will help you and your team realize those goals.
This book is for the developer understands that the business of software is, first and foremost, business. Writing code is fun, but writing high-quality code on time and at the lowest possible cost is what makes a software project successful. A team lead or architect who wants to succeed must keep that in mind.
Given that target audience, this book assumes a certain level of skill at reading code in one or more languages, and basic familiarity with building and testing software projects. It also assumes that you have at least a basic understanding of the software development lifecycle, and how requirements from customers become testable software projects.
Who This Book Is Not For: This is not a book for the entry-level developer fresh out of college, or for those just getting started as professional coders. It isn’t a book about writing code; it’s a book about how we write code together while keeping quality up and costs down. It is not for those who want to learn to write more efficient or literate code. There are plenty of other books available on those subjects, as mentioned previously.
This is also not a book about project management or development methodology. All of the strategies and techniques presented here are just as applicable to waterfall projects as they are to those employing Agile methodologies. While certain strategies such as Test-Driven Development and Continuous Integration have risen to popularity hand in hand with Agile development methodologies, there is no coupling between them. There are plenty of projects run using SCRUM that do not use TDD, and there are just as many waterfall projects that do.
Philosophy versus Practicality: There are a lot of religious arguments in software development. Exceptions versus result codes, strongly typed versus dynamic languages, and where to put your curly braces are just a few examples. This book tried to steer clear of those arguments here. Most of the chapters in this book deal with practical steps that you as a developer can take to improve your skills and improve the state of your project. The author makes no claims that these practices represent the way to write software. They represent strategies that have worked well for the author and other developers that he have worked closely with.
Philosophy certainly has its place in software development. Much of the current thinking in project management has been influenced by the Agile philosophy, for example. The next wave may be influenced by the Lean methodologies developed by Toyota for building automobiles. Because it represents a philosophy, the Lean process model can be applied to building software just as easily as to building cars. On the other hand, because they exist at the philosophical level, such methodologies can be difficult to conceptualize. The book tries to favor the practical over the philosophical, the concrete over the theoretical. This should be the kind of book that you can pick up, read one chapter of, and go away with some practical changes you can make to your software project that will make it better.
That said, the first part of this book is entitled “Philosophy” because the strategies described in it represent ways of approaching a problem rather than a specific solution. There are just as many practical ways to do Test-Driven Development as there are ways to manage a software project. You will have to pick the way that fits your chosen programming language, environment, and team structure. The book has tried to describe some tangible ways of realizing TDD, but it remains an abstract ideal rather than a one-size-fits-all technical solution. The same applies to Continuous Integration. There are numerous ways of thinking about and achieving a Continuous Integration solution, and this book presents only a few. Continuous Integration represents a way of thinking about your development process rather than a concrete or specific technique.
The second and third parts represent more concrete process and construction techniques that can improve your code and your project. They focus on the pragmatic rather than the philosophical.
Every Little Bit Helps: You do not have to sit down and read this book from cover to cover. While there are interrelationships between the chapters, each chapter can also stand on its own. If you know that you have a particular problem such as error handling with your current project, read that chapter and try to implement some of the suggestions in it. Don’t feel that you have to overhaul your entire software project at once. The various techniques described in this book can all incrementally improve a project one at a time.
If you are starting a brand new project and have an opportunity to define its structure, then by all means read the whole book and see how it influences the way you design your project. If you have to work within an existing project structure, you might have more success applying a few improvements at a time.
In terms of personal career growth, the same applies. Every new technique you learn makes you a better developer, so take them one at a time as your schedule and projects allow.
Examples: Most of the examples in this book are written in C#. However, the techniques described in this book apply just as well to any other modern programming language with a little translation. Even if you are unfamiliar with the inner workings or details of C# as a language, the examples are very small and simple to understand. Again, this is not a book about how to write code, and the examples in it are all intended to illustrate a specific point, not to become a part of your software project in any literal sense.
This book is organized into three sections, Philosophy, Process and Code Construction. The following is a short summary of what you will find in each section and chapter.
Part I (Philosophy) contains chapters that focus on abstract ideas about how to approach a software project. Each chapter contains practical examples of how to realize those ideas.
Chapter 1 (Buy, not Build) describes how to go about deciding which parts of your software project you need to write yourself and which parts you may be able to purchase or otherwise leverage from someplace else. In order to keep costs down and focus on your real competitive advantage, it is necessary to write only those parts of your application that you really need to.
Chapter 2 (Test-Driven Development) examines the Test-Driven Development (or Test-Driven Design) philosophy and some practical ways of applying it to your development lifecycle to produce higher-quality code in less time.
Chapter 3 (Continuous Integration) explores the Continuous Integration philosophy and how you can apply it to your project. CI involves automating your build and unit testing processes to give developers a shorter feedback cycle about changes that they make to the project. A shorter feedback cycle makes it easier for developers to work together as a team and at a higher level of productivity.
The chapters in Part II (Process) explore processes and tools that you can use as a team to improve the quality of your source code and make it easier to understand and to maintain.
Chapter 4 (Done Is Done) contains suggestions for defining what it means for a developer to “finish” a development task. Creating a “done is done” policy for your team can make it easier for developers to work together, and easier for developers and testers to work together. If everyone on your team follows the same set of steps to complete each task, then development will be more predictable and of a higher quality.
Chapter 5 (Testing) presents some concrete suggestions for how to create tests, how to run them, and how to organize them to make them easier to run, easier to measure, and more useful to developers and to testers. Included are sections on what code coverage means and how to measure it effectively, how to organize your tests by type, and how to automate your testing processes to get the most benefit from them.
Chapter 6 (Source Control) explains techniques for using your source control system more effectively so that it is easier for developers to work together on the same project, and easier to correlate changes in source control with physical software binaries and with defect or issue reports in your tracking system.
Chapter 7 (Static Analysis) examines what static analysis is, what information it can provide, and how it can improve the quality and maintainability of your projects.
Part III (Code Construction) includes chapters on specific coding techniques that can improve the quality and maintainability of your software projects.
Chapter 8 (Contract, Contract, Contract!) tackles programming by contract and how that can make your code easier for developers to understand and to use. Programming by contract can also make your application easier (and therefore less expensive) to maintain and support.
Chapter 9 (Limiting Dependencies) focuses on techniques for limiting how dependent each part of your application is upon the others. Limiting dependencies can lead to software that is easier to make changes to and cheaper to maintain as well as easier to deploy and test.
Chapter 10 (The Model-View-Presenter Model) offers a brief description of the MVP model and explains how following the MVP model will make your application easier to test....
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Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Advanced Options Trading: Approaches, Tools, and Techniques for Professionals Traders
Advanced Options Trading: Approaches, Tools, and Techniques for Professionals Traders Review
Advanced Options Trading: Approaches, Tools, and Techniques for Professionals Traders Feature
As an active trader in today’s market, you are faced with unprecedented challenges. Dramatic price swings in equity, debt, and currency have made it tougher than ever to manage and trade risk. But with great risk, of course, comes great opportunity— and Advanced Options Trading delivers a detailed system for successfully trading options in a highly volatile and unpredictable global market.
Noted options educator and owner of his own brokerage house, Kevin M. Kraus explains the best practices for using options to capture premium, reduce equity purchase prices, manage the costs of buying options, and control portfolio risk—critical skills for finding steady profits in our ever-shifting economic landscape. He offers a close examination of the nature of volatility and what it means for investors, whether they’re just getting started or are veterans of the options market.
Advanced Options Trading covers:
- The critical nature of forward-looking implied volatility
- Ways to level the volatility playing field with options
- Techniques for adding value to a portfolio while managing risk
- The functions of price hedging— and how to do it effectively
- Interest rate options and which factors drive debt markets
- Options analysis techniques
Options are among the most valuable tools for hedging and risk management, and they also function as profitable investment vehicles, allowing you to make bearish trades through radical market shifts.
Advanced Options Trading provides a solid foundation on the options market, along with the necessary skills for trading and managing risk in today’s constantly expanding and contracting market.
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Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Models and Tools for Managing Development Processes
Models and Tools for Managing Development Processes Review
Models and Tools for Managing Development Processes Feature
This book is devoted to models and tools for managing development processes in the fields of software engineering and mechanical and chemical engineering. The author evaluates the state of the art in the area and presents an integrated approach addressing the limitations of the presently available tools and systems. The models introduced for managing development processes cover products, activities, and resources in a systematic and coherent way; moreover, the models are designed to cope with the dynamics of the development processes. The tools and the management system developed by the author provide customized environments for different classes of users. The management environment supports managers in coordinating managerial activities; developers use the work environment in order to perform technical activities; finally, the modeling environment is used to adapt the management system to specific application domains.
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Sunday, November 28, 2010
Computing Tools for Modeling, Optimization and Simulation
Computing Tools for Modeling, Optimization and Simulation Review
Computing Tools for Modeling, Optimization and Simulation Feature
Computing Tools for Modeling, Optimization and Simulation reflects the need for preserving the marriage between operations research and computing in order to create more efficient and powerful software tools in the years ahead. The 17 papers included in this volume were carefully selected to cover a wide range of topics related to the interface between operations research and computer science. The volume includes the now perennial applications of rnetaheuristics (such as genetic algorithms, scatter search, and tabu search) as well as research on global optimization, knowledge management, software rnaintainability and object-oriented modeling. These topics reflect the complexity and variety of the problems that current and future software tools must be capable of tackling. The OR/CS interface is frequently at the core of successful applications and the development of new methodologies, making the research in this book a relevant reference in the future. The editors' goal for this book has been to increase the interest in the interface of computer science and operations research. Both researchers and practitioners will benefit from this book. The tutorial papers may spark the interest of practitioners for developing and applying new techniques to complex problems. In addition, the book includes papers that explore new angles of well-established methods for problems in the area of nonlinear optimization and mixed integer programming, which seasoned researchers in these fields may find fascinating.
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Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Modeling with Data: Tools and Techniques for Scientific Computing
Modeling with Data: Tools and Techniques for Scientific Computing Review
Modeling with Data: Tools and Techniques for Scientific Computing Feature
Modeling with Data fully explains how to execute computationally intensive analyses on very large data sets, showing readers how to determine the best methods for solving a variety of different problems, how to create and debug statistical models, and how to run an analysis and evaluate the results.
Ben Klemens introduces a set of open and unlimited tools, and uses them to demonstrate data management, analysis, and simulation techniques essential for dealing with large data sets and computationally intensive procedures. He then demonstrates how to easily apply these tools to the many threads of statistical technique, including classical, Bayesian, maximum likelihood, and Monte Carlo methods. Klemens's accessible survey describes these models in a unified and nontraditional manner, providing alternative ways of looking at statistical concepts that often befuddle students. The book includes nearly one hundred sample programs of all kinds. Links to these programs will be available on this page at a later date.
Modeling with Data will interest anyone looking for a comprehensive guide to these powerful statistical tools, including researchers and graduate students in the social sciences, biology, engineering, economics, and applied mathematics.
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Monday, October 25, 2010
Data Analysis and Decision Making with Microsoft Excel (with CD-ROM, InfoTrac, and Decision Tools and Statistic Tools Suite)
Data Analysis and Decision Making with Microsoft Excel (with CD-ROM, InfoTrac, and Decision Tools and Statistic Tools Suite) Review
Data Analysis and Decision Making with Microsoft Excel (with CD-ROM, InfoTrac, and Decision Tools and Statistic Tools Suite) Feature
Master data analysis, modeling, and spreadsheet use with DATA ANALYSIS AND DECISION MAKING WITH MICROSOFT EXCEL! With a teach-by-example approach, student-friendly writing style, and complete Excel integration, this business statistics text provides you with the tools you need to succeed. Margin notes, boxed-in definitions and formulas in the text, enhanced explanations in the text itself, and stated objectives for the examples found throughout the text make studying easy. Problem sets and cases provide realistic examples that enable you to see the relevance of the material to your future as a business leader.
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Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Managing Systems Requirements: Methods, Tools, and Cases
Managing Systems Requirements: Methods, Tools, and Cases Review
Managing Systems Requirements: Methods, Tools, and Cases Feature
Aiming to provide a blueprint for aligning business process with business objectives, this book covers practical methods, real-life case studies and commercial software tools relating to process re-engineering.
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Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Systems and Software Verification: Model-Checking Techniques and Tools
Systems and Software Verification: Model-Checking Techniques and Tools Review
Systems and Software Verification: Model-Checking Techniques and Tools Feature
Model checking is a powerful approach for the formal verification of software. It automatically provides complete proofs of correctness, or explains, via counter-examples, why a system is not correct. Here, the author provides a well written and basic introduction to the new technique. The first part describes in simple terms the theoretical basis of model checking: transition systems as a formal model of systems, temporal logic as a formal language for behavioral properties, and model-checking algorithms. The second part explains how to write rich and structured temporal logic specifications in practice, while the third part surveys some of the major model checkers available.
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Saturday, August 28, 2010
Model-based Fault Diagnosis Techniques: Design Schemes, Algorithms, and Tools
Model-based Fault Diagnosis Techniques: Design Schemes, Algorithms, and Tools Review
Model-based Fault Diagnosis Techniques: Design Schemes, Algorithms, and Tools Feature
The objective of this book is to introduce basic model-based FDI schemes, advanced analysis and design algorithms, and the needed mathematical and control theory tools at a level for graduate students and researchers as well as for engineers. This is a textbook with extensive examples and references. Most methods are given in the form of an algorithm that enables a direct implementation in a programme. Comparisons among different methods are included when possible.
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