Download or read book Why Software Sucks and what You Can Do about it written by David S. Platt and published by Addison-Wesley Professional. This book was released on 2007 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "I've just finished reading the best computer book [ Why Software Sucks...] since I last re-read one of mine and I wanted to pass along the good word. . . . Put this one on your must-have list if you have software, love software, hate programmers, or even ARE a programmer, because Mr. Platt (who teaches programming) has set out to puncture the bloated egos of all those who think that just because they can write a program, they can make it easy to use. . . . This book is funny, but it is also an important wake-up call for software companies that want to reduce the size of their customer support bills. If you were ever stuck for an answer to the question, 'Why do good programmers make such awful software?' this book holds the answer." -- John McCormick, Locksmith columnist, TechRepublic.com "I must say first, I don't get many computing manuscripts that make me laugh out loud. Between the laughs, Dave Platt delivers some very interesting insight and perspective, all in a lucid and engaging style. I don't get much of that either!" -- Henry Leitner, assistant dean for information technology and senior lecturer on computer science, Harvard University "A riotous book for all of us downtrodden computer users, written in language that we understand." -- Stacy Baratelli, author's barber "David's unique take on the problems that bedevil software creation made me think about the process in new ways. If you care about the quality of the software you create or use, read this book." -- Dave Chappell, principal, Chappell & Associates "I began to read it in my office but stopped before I reached the bottom of the first page. I couldn't keep a grin off my face! I'll enjoy it after I go back home and find a safe place to read." -- Tsukasa Makino, IT manager "David explains, in terms that my mother-in-law can understand, why the software we use today can be so frustrating, even dangerous at times, and gives us some real ideas on what we can do about it." -- Jim Brosseau, Clarrus Consulting Group, Inc. A Book for Anyone Who Uses a Computer Today...and Just Wants to Scream! Today's software sucks. There's no other good way to say it. It's unsafe, allowing criminal programs to creep through the Internet wires into our very bedrooms. It's unreliable, crashing when we need it most, wiping out hours or days of work with no way to get it back. And it's hard to use, requiring large amounts of head-banging to figure out the simplest operations. It's no secret that software sucks. You know that from personal experience, whether you use computers for work or personal tasks. In this book, programming insider David Platt explains why that's the case and, more importantly, why it doesn't have to be that way. And he explains it in plain, jargon-free English that's a joy to read, using real-world examples with which you're already familiar. In the end, he suggests what you, as a typical user, without a technical background, can do about this sad state of our software--how you, as an informed consumer, don't have to take the abuse that bad software dishes out. As you might expect from the book's title, Dave's expose is laced with humor--sometimes outrageous, but always dead on. You'll laugh out loud as you recall incidents with your own software that made you cry. You'll slap your thigh with the same hand that so often pounded your computer desk and wished it was a bad programmer's face. But Dave hasn't written this book just for laughs. He's written it to give long-overdue voice to your own discovery--that software does, indeed, suck, but it shouldn't.
Download or read book Dreaming in Code written by Scott Rosenberg and published by Crown Currency. This book was released on 2008-02-26 with total page 415 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Our civilization runs on software. Yet the art of creating it continues to be a dark mystery, even to the experts. To find out why it’s so hard to bend computers to our will, Scott Rosenberg spent three years following a team of maverick software developers—led by Lotus 1-2-3 creator Mitch Kapor—designing a novel personal information manager meant to challenge market leader Microsoft Outlook. Their story takes us through a maze of abrupt dead ends and exhilarating breakthroughs as they wrestle not only with the abstraction of code, but with the unpredictability of human behavior— especially their own.
Download or read book Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering written by Robert L. Glass and published by Addison-Wesley Professional. This book was released on 2003 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Regarding the controversial and thought-provoking assessments in this handbook, many software professionals might disagree with the authors, but all will embrace the debate. Glass identifies many of the key problems hampering success in this field. Each fact is supported by insightful discussion and detailed references.
Download or read book The Problem with Software written by Adam Barr and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2018-10-23 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An industry insider explains why there is so much bad software—and why academia doesn't teach programmers what industry wants them to know. Why is software so prone to bugs? So vulnerable to viruses? Why are software products so often delayed, or even canceled? Is software development really hard, or are software developers just not that good at it? In The Problem with Software, Adam Barr examines the proliferation of bad software, explains what causes it, and offers some suggestions on how to improve the situation. For one thing, Barr points out, academia doesn't teach programmers what they actually need to know to do their jobs: how to work in a team to create code that works reliably and can be maintained by somebody other than the original authors. As the size and complexity of commercial software have grown, the gap between academic computer science and industry has widened. It's an open secret that there is little engineering in software engineering, which continues to rely not on codified scientific knowledge but on intuition and experience. Barr, who worked as a programmer for more than twenty years, describes how the industry has evolved, from the era of mainframes and Fortran to today's embrace of the cloud. He explains bugs and why software has so many of them, and why today's interconnected computers offer fertile ground for viruses and worms. The difference between good and bad software can be a single line of code, and Barr includes code to illustrate the consequences of seemingly inconsequential choices by programmers. Looking to the future, Barr writes that the best prospect for improving software engineering is the move to the cloud. When software is a service and not a product, companies will have more incentive to make it good rather than “good enough to ship."
Download or read book Software Engineering at Google written by Titus Winters and published by O'Reilly Media. This book was released on 2020-02-28 with total page 602 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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
Download or read book Code Simplicity written by Max Kanat-Alexander and published by "O'Reilly Media, Inc.". This book was released on 2012-03-23 with total page 85 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Good software design is simple and easy to understand. Unfortunately, the average computer program today is so complex that no one could possibly comprehend how all the code works. This concise guide helps you understand the fundamentals of good design through scientific laws—principles you can apply to any programming language or project from here to eternity. Whether you’re a junior programmer, senior software engineer, or non-technical manager, you’ll learn how to create a sound plan for your software project, and make better decisions about the pattern and structure of your system. Discover why good software design has become the missing science Understand the ultimate purpose of software and the goals of good design Determine the value of your design now and in the future Examine real-world examples that demonstrate how a system changes over time Create designs that allow for the most change in the environment with the least change in the software Make easier changes in the future by keeping your code simpler now Gain better knowledge of your software’s behavior with more accurate tests
Download or read book The Joy of UX written by David S. Platt and published by Addison-Wesley Professional. This book was released on 2016-06-02 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “For years now, I’ve been running around preaching to anyone who’ll listen that UX is something that everybody (not just UX people) needs to be doing. Dave has done an excellent job of explaining what developers need to know about UX, in a complete but compact, easy-to-absorb, and implementable form. Developers, come and get it!” —Steve Krug, author of Don’t Make Me Think! A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability Master User Experience and Interaction Design from the Developer’s Perspective For modern developers, UX expertise is indispensable: Without outstanding user experience, your software will fail. Now, David Platt has written the first and only comprehensive developer’s guide to achieving a world-class user experience. Quality user experience isn’t hard, but it does require developers to think in new ways. The Joy of UX shows you how, with plenty of concrete examples. Firmly grounded in reality, this guide will help you optimize usability and engagement while also coping with difficult technical, schedule, and budget constraints. Platt’s technology-agnostic approach illuminates all the principles, techniques, and best practices you need to build great user experiences for the web, mobile devices, and desktop environments. He covers the entire process, from user personas and stories through wireframes, layouts, and execution. He also addresses key issues—such as telemetry and security—that many other UX guides ignore. You’ll find all the resources and artifacts you need: complete case studies, sample design documents, testing plans, and more. This guide shows you how to Recognize and avoid pitfalls that lead to poor user experiences Learn the crucial difference between design and mere decoration Put yourself in your users’ shoes—understand what they want (and where, when, and why) Quickly sketch and prototype user interfaces for easy refinement Test your sketches on real users or appropriate surrogates Integrate telemetry to capture the best possible usage information Use analytics to accurately interpret the data you’ve captured Solve unique experience problems presented by mobile environments Secure your app without compromising usability any more than necessary “Polish” your UX to eliminate user effort everywhere you can Register your product at informit.com/register for convenient access to downloads, updates, and corrections as they become available.
Download or read book Badass Making Users Awesome written by Kathy Sierra and published by "O'Reilly Media, Inc.". This book was released on 2015-01-29 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Note for ebook customers: The design and layout of this book play a key role in conveying the author's message. When creating the ebooks, we've tried to keep the look and feel of the print edition, but this means that not all e-reading devices will support the files. The EPUB format is optimized for iPad. The Mobi files are optimized for Kindle Fire tablets and phones and for Kindle reading apps. Imagine you’re in a game with one objective: a bestselling product or service. The rules? No marketing budget, no PR stunts, and it must be sustainably successful. No short-term fads. This is not a game of chance. It is a game of skill and strategy. And it begins with a single question: given competing products of equal pricing, promotion, and perceived quality, why does one outsell the others? The answer doesn’t live in the sustainably successful products or services. The answer lives in those who use them. Our goal is to craft a strategy for creating successful users. And that strategy is full of surprising, counter-intuitive, and astonishingly simple techniques that don’t depend on a massive marketing or development budget. Techniques typically overlooked by even the most well-funded, well-staffed product teams. Every role is a key player in this game. Product development, engineering, marketing, user experience, support—everyone on the team. Even if that team is a start-up of one. Armed with a surprisingly overlooked science and a unique POV, we can can reduce the role of luck. We can build sustainably successful products and services that rely not on unethical persuasive marketing tricks but on helping our users have deeper, richer experiences. Not just in the moments while they’re using our product but, more importantly, in the moments when they aren’t.
Download or read book Cloud Native Infrastructure written by Justin Garrison and published by "O'Reilly Media, Inc.". This book was released on 2017-10-25 with total page 159 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cloud native infrastructure is more than servers, network, and storage in the cloud—it is as much about operational hygiene as it is about elasticity and scalability. In this book, you’ll learn practices, patterns, and requirements for creating infrastructure that meets your needs, capable of managing the full life cycle of cloud native applications. Justin Garrison and Kris Nova reveal hard-earned lessons on architecting infrastructure from companies such as Google, Amazon, and Netflix. They draw inspiration from projects adopted by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), and provide examples of patterns seen in existing tools such as Kubernetes. With this book, you will: Understand why cloud native infrastructure is necessary to effectively run cloud native applications Use guidelines to decide when—and if—your business should adopt cloud native practices Learn patterns for deploying and managing infrastructure and applications Design tests to prove that your infrastructure works as intended, even in a variety of edge cases Learn how to secure infrastructure with policy as code
Download or read book Tragic Design written by Jonathan Shariat and published by "O'Reilly Media, Inc.". This book was released on 2017-04-19 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bad design is everywhere, and its cost is much higher than we think. In this thought-provoking book, authors Jonathan Shariat and Cynthia Savard Saucier explain how poorly designed products can anger, sadden, exclude, and even kill people who use them. The designers responsible certainly didn’t intend harm, so what can you do to avoid making similar mistakes? Tragic Design examines real case studies that show how certain design choices adversely affected users, and includes in-depth interviews with authorities in the design industry. Pick up this book and learn how you can be an agent of change in the design community and at your company. You’ll explore: Designs that can kill, including the bad interface that doomed a young cancer patient Designs that anger, through impolite technology and dark patterns How design can inadvertently cause emotional pain Designs that exclude people through lack of accessibility, diversity, and justice How to advocate for ethical design when it isn’t easy to do so Tools and techniques that can help you avoid harmful design decisions Inspiring professionals who use design to improve our world
Download or read book Why the World Sucks and What We Can Do about It written by B. Regan Asher, Ph.d. and published by CreateSpace. This book was released on 2013-12 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Tired of watching the news, which is almost always bad? Frustrated at the deterioration of our society? Concerned about the world we will leave to our children? Think that the average person was a better person a generation or two ago? Politics won't solve the problem. It's now a game which goes round in circles, accomplishing little. Financial mismanagement is everywhere. Look at Greece, Spain and Italy. But also look at France and the United States. We're managing our governments like spoiled children. And it doesn't matter whether it's liberals or conservatives who are in charge. Both left and right are to blame because the problem is the system itself. "Why the World Sucks" outlines the issues and provides possible solutions. From a slightly eccentric point of view and with a little bit of humor." -- Back cover
Download or read book DevOps For Dummies written by Emily Freeman and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2019-08-20 with total page 375 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Develop faster with DevOps DevOps embraces a culture of unifying the creation and distribution of technology in a way that allows for faster release cycles and more resource-efficient product updating. DevOps For Dummies provides a guidebook for those on the development or operations side in need of a primer on this way of working. Inside, DevOps evangelist Emily Freeman provides a roadmap for adopting the management and technology tools, as well as the culture changes, needed to dive head-first into DevOps. Identify your organization’s needs Create a DevOps framework Change your organizational structure Manage projects in the DevOps world DevOps For Dummies is essential reading for developers and operations professionals in the early stages of DevOps adoption.
Download or read book INSPIRED written by Marty Cagan and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2017-11-17 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do today’s most successful tech companies—Amazon, Google, Facebook, Netflix, Tesla—design, develop, and deploy the products that have earned the love of literally billions of people around the world? Perhaps surprisingly, they do it very differently than the vast majority of tech companies. In INSPIRED, technology product management thought leader Marty Cagan provides readers with a master class in how to structure and staff a vibrant and successful product organization, and how to discover and deliver technology products that your customers will love—and that will work for your business. With sections on assembling the right people and skillsets, discovering the right product, embracing an effective yet lightweight process, and creating a strong product culture, readers can take the information they learn and immediately leverage it within their own organizations—dramatically improving their own product efforts. Whether you’re an early stage startup working to get to product/market fit, or a growth-stage company working to scale your product organization, or a large, long-established company trying to regain your ability to consistently deliver new value for your customers, INSPIRED will take you and your product organization to a new level of customer engagement, consistent innovation, and business success. Filled with the author’s own personal stories—and profiles of some of today’s most-successful product managers and technology-powered product companies, including Adobe, Apple, BBC, Google, Microsoft, and Netflix—INSPIRED will show you how to turn up the dial of your own product efforts, creating technology products your customers love. The first edition of INSPIRED, published ten years ago, established itself as the primary reference for technology product managers, and can be found on the shelves of nearly every successful technology product company worldwide. This thoroughly updated second edition shares the same objective of being the most valuable resource for technology product managers, yet it is completely new—sharing the latest practices and techniques of today’s most-successful tech product companies, and the men and women behind every great product.
Download or read book Why Most PowerPoint Presentations Suck written by Rick Altman and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THIRD EDITION: Did you learn PowerPoint in 30 minutes? Join the crowd...most people get no more than a half-hour of training time with PowerPoint before they are tasked with making what is likely to be a first impression of themselves or their company. This book is for earnest presenters and presentation designers who want to escape the perils that entrap so many who turn to PowerPoint for their presentations.
Download or read book Developer Hegemony written by Erik Dietrich and published by BlogIntoBook.com. This book was released on with total page 430 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It’s been said that software is eating the planet. The modern economy—the world itself—relies on technology. Demand for the people who can produce it far outweighs the supply. So why do developers occupy largely subordinate roles in the corporate structure? Developer Hegemony explores the past, present, and future of the corporation and what it means for developers. While it outlines problems with the modern corporate structure, it’s ultimately a play-by-play of how to leave the corporate carnival and control your own destiny. And it’s an emboldening, specific vision of what software development looks like in the world of developer hegemony—one where developers band together into partner firms of “efficiencers,” finally able to command the pay, respect, and freedom that’s earned by solving problems no one else can. Developers, if you grow tired of being treated like geeks who can only be trusted to take orders and churn out code, consider this your call to arms. Bring about the autonomous future that’s rightfully yours. It’s time for developer hegemony.
Download or read book The Problem with Software written by Adam Barr and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2018-10-23 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An industry insider explains why there is so much bad software—and why academia doesn't teach programmers what industry wants them to know. Why is software so prone to bugs? So vulnerable to viruses? Why are software products so often delayed, or even canceled? Is software development really hard, or are software developers just not that good at it? In The Problem with Software, Adam Barr examines the proliferation of bad software, explains what causes it, and offers some suggestions on how to improve the situation. For one thing, Barr points out, academia doesn't teach programmers what they actually need to know to do their jobs: how to work in a team to create code that works reliably and can be maintained by somebody other than the original authors. As the size and complexity of commercial software have grown, the gap between academic computer science and industry has widened. It's an open secret that there is little engineering in software engineering, which continues to rely not on codified scientific knowledge but on intuition and experience. Barr, who worked as a programmer for more than twenty years, describes how the industry has evolved, from the era of mainframes and Fortran to today's embrace of the cloud. He explains bugs and why software has so many of them, and why today's interconnected computers offer fertile ground for viruses and worms. The difference between good and bad software can be a single line of code, and Barr includes code to illustrate the consequences of seemingly inconsequential choices by programmers. Looking to the future, Barr writes that the best prospect for improving software engineering is the move to the cloud. When software is a service and not a product, companies will have more incentive to make it good rather than “good enough to ship."
Download or read book Domain Driven Design Distilled written by Vaughn Vernon and published by Addison-Wesley Professional. This book was released on 2016-06-01 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Domain-Driven Design (DDD) software modeling delivers powerful results in practice, not just in theory, which is why developers worldwide are rapidly moving to adopt it. Now, for the first time, there’s an accessible guide to the basics of DDD: What it is, what problems it solves, how it works, and how to quickly gain value from it. Concise, readable, and actionable, Domain-Driven Design Distilled never buries you in detail–it focuses on what you need to know to get results. Vaughn Vernon, author of the best-selling Implementing Domain-Driven Design, draws on his twenty years of experience applying DDD principles to real-world situations. He is uniquely well-qualified to demystify its complexities, illuminate its subtleties, and help you solve the problems you might encounter. Vernon guides you through each core DDD technique for building better software. You’ll learn how to segregate domain models using the powerful Bounded Contexts pattern, to develop a Ubiquitous Language within an explicitly bounded context, and to help domain experts and developers work together to create that language. Vernon shows how to use Subdomains to handle legacy systems and to integrate multiple Bounded Contexts to define both team relationships and technical mechanisms. Domain-Driven Design Distilled brings DDD to life. Whether you’re a developer, architect, analyst, consultant, or customer, Vernon helps you truly understand it so you can benefit from its remarkable power. Coverage includes What DDD can do for you and your organization–and why it’s so important The cornerstones of strategic design with DDD: Bounded Contexts and Ubiquitous Language Strategic design with Subdomains Context Mapping: helping teams work together and integrate software more strategically Tactical design with Aggregates and Domain Events Using project acceleration and management tools to establish and maintain team cadence
