Write code that can adapt to changes. By applying this book’s principles, you can create code that accommodates new requirements and unforeseen scenarios without significant rewrites. Gary McLean Hall describes Agile best practices, principles, and patterns for designing and writing code that can evolve more quickly and easily, with fewer errors, because it doesn’t impede change. Now revised, updated, and expanded, Adaptive Code, Second Edition adds indispensable practical insights on Kanban, dependency inversion, and creating reusable abstractions. Drawing on over a decade of Agile consulting and development experience, McLean Hall has updated his best-seller with deeper coverage of unit testing, refactoring, pure dependency injection, and more. Master powerful new ways to: • Write code that enables and complements Scrum, Kanban, or any other Agile framework • Develop code that can survive major changes in requirements • Plan for adaptability by using dependencies, layering, interfaces, and design patterns • Perform unit testing and refactoring in tandem, gaining more value from both • Use the “golden master” technique to make legacy code adaptive • Build SOLID code with single-responsibility, open/closed, and Liskov substitution principles • Create smaller interfaces to support more-diverse client and architectural needs • Leverage dependency injection best practices to improve code adaptability • Apply dependency inversion with the Stairway pattern, and avoid related anti-patterns About You This book is for programmers of all skill levels seeking more-practical insight into design patterns, SOLID principles, unit testing, refactoring, and related topics. Most readers will have programmed in C#, Java, C++, or similar object-oriented languages, and will be familiar with core procedural programming techniques.

"Your process may be agile, but are you building agility directly into the code base? This book teaches .NET programmers how to give code the flexibility to adapt to changing requirements and customer demands by applying cutting-edge techniques, including SOLID principles, design patterns, and other industry best practices. Understand why composition is preferable to inheritance and how flexible the interface really can be; gain deep knowledge of key design patterns and anti-patterns, when to apply them, and how to give their code agility; bridge the gap between the theory behind SOLID principles, design patterns, and industry best practices by pragmatically solving real-world problems; get code samples written in upcoming version of Microsoft Visual C#. Topics include: Agile with Scrum process; dependencies and layering; the interface; patterns and anti-patterns; introduction to SOLID principles, including open/closed and dependency interjection; and using application templates"--Publisher's description.

Advances in Genetic Programming reports significant results in improving the power of genetic programming, presenting techniques that can be employed immediately in the solution of complex problems in many areas, including machine learning and the simulation of autonomous behavior. Popular languages such as C and C++ are used in manu of the applications and experiments, illustrating how genetic programming is not restricted to symbolic computing languages such as LISP. Researchers interested in getting started in genetic programming will find information on how to begin, on what public-domain code is available, and on how to become part of the active genetic programming community via electronic mail.

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 teams Agile 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.

This ground-breaking book presents a complete methodology for adaptive programming in any object-oriented programming language. Lieberherr's adaptive method signals a new approach to object-oriented program design that goes beyond object encapsulation and hard-coded navigation paths to achieve more flexible interactions among objects. Programmers using this method work at a higher, schematic level of abstraction; graph notation represents the class structure and a "propagation pattern" language tells how to distribute meaningful methods - including navigation - across the structure. Using this method, programmers can easily adapt and modify programs as they evolve. This book can be used with any object-oriented programming environment, or with the Demeter Tools Version 5.5, a complete, professional software system for creating and maintaining adaptive programs.

With the award-winning book Agile Software Development: Principles, Patterns, and Practices, Robert C. Martin helped bring Agile principles to tens of thousands of Java and C++ programmers. Now .NET programmers have a definitive guide to agile methods with this completely updated volume from Robert C. Martin and Micah Martin, Agile Principles, Patterns, and Practices in C#. This book presents a series of case studies illustrating the fundamentals of Agile development and Agile design, and moves quickly from UML models to real C# code. The introductory chapters lay out the basics of the agile movement, while the later chapters show proven techniques in action. The book includes many source code examples that are also available for download from the authors’ Web site. Readers will come away from this book understanding Agile principles, and the fourteen practices of Extreme Programming Spiking, splitting, velocity, and planning iterations and releases Test-driven development, test-first design, and acceptance testing Refactoring with unit testing Pair programming Agile design and design smells The five types of UML diagrams and how to use them effectively Object-oriented package design and design patterns How to put all of it together for a real-world project Whether you are a C# programmer or a Visual Basic or Java programmer learning C#, a software development manager, or a business analyst, Agile Principles, Patterns, and Practices in C# is the first book you should read to understand agile software and how it applies to programming in the .NET Framework.

The significantly expanded and updated new edition of a widely used text on reinforcement learning, one of the most active research areas in artificial intelligence. Reinforcement learning, one of the most active research areas in artificial intelligence, is a computational approach to learning whereby an agent tries to maximize the total amount of reward it receives while interacting with a complex, uncertain environment. In Reinforcement Learning, Richard Sutton and Andrew Barto provide a clear and simple account of the field's key ideas and algorithms. This second edition has been significantly expanded and updated, presenting new topics and updating coverage of other topics. Like the first edition, this second edition focuses on core online learning algorithms, with the more mathematical material set off in shaded boxes. Part I covers as much of reinforcement learning as possible without going beyond the tabular case for which exact solutions can be found. Many algorithms presented in this part are new to the second edition, including UCB, Expected Sarsa, and Double Learning. Part II extends these ideas to function approximation, with new sections on such topics as artificial neural networks and the Fourier basis, and offers expanded treatment of off-policy learning and policy-gradient methods. Part III has new chapters on reinforcement learning's relationships to psychology and neuroscience, as well as an updated case-studies chapter including AlphaGo and AlphaGo Zero, Atari game playing, and IBM Watson's wagering strategy. The final chapter discusses the future societal impacts of reinforcement learning.