Software legend Max Kanat-Alexander shows you how to succeed as a developer by embracing simplicity, with forty-three essays that will help you really understand the software you work with. About This Book Read and enjoy the superlative writing and insights of the legendary Max Kanat-Alexander Learn and reflect with Max on how to bring simplicity to your software design principles Discover the secrets of rockstar programmers and how to also just suck less as a programmer Who This Book Is For Understanding Software is for every programmer, or anyone who works with programmers. If life is feeling more complex than it should be, and you need to touch base with some clear thinking again, this book is for you. If you need some inspiration and a reminder of how to approach your work as a programmer by embracing some simplicity in your work again, this book is for you. If you're one of Max's followers already, this book is a collection of Max's thoughts selected and curated for you to enjoy and reflect on. If you're new to Max's work, and ready to connect with the power of simplicity again, this book is for you! What You Will Learn See how to bring simplicity and success to your programming world Clues to complexity - and how to build excellent software Simplicity and software design Principles for programmers The secrets of rockstar programmers Max's views and interpretation of the Software industry Why Programmers suck and how to suck less as a programmer Software design in two sentences What is a bug? Go deep into debugging In Detail In Understanding Software, Max Kanat-Alexander, Technical Lead for Code Health at Google, shows you how to bring simplicity back to computer programming. Max explains to you why programmers suck, and how to suck less as a programmer. There's just too much complex stuff in the world. Complex stuff can't be used, and it breaks too easily. Complexity is stupid. Simplicity is smart. Understanding Software covers many areas of programming, from how to write simple code to profound insights into programming, and then how to suck less at what you do! You'll discover the problems with software complexity, the root of its causes, and how to use simplicity to create great software. You'll examine debugging like you've never done before, and how to get a handle on being happy while working in teams. Max brings a selection of carefully crafted essays, thoughts, and advice about working and succeeding in the software industry, from his legendary blog Code Simplicity. Max has crafted forty-three essays which have the power to help you avoid complexity and embrace simplicity, so you can be a happier and more successful developer. Max's technical knowledge, insight, and kindness, has earned him code guru status, and his ideas will inspire you and help refresh your approach to the challenges of being a developer. Style and approach Understanding Software is a new selection of carefully chosen and crafted essays from Max Kanat-Alexander's legendary blog call Code Simplicity. Max's writing and thoughts are great to sit and read cover to cover, or if you prefer you can drop in and see what you discover new every single time!

An Expert Guide to Software Performance Optimization From mobile and cloud apps to video games to driverless vehicle control, more and more software is time-constrained: It must deliver reliable results seamlessly, consistently, and virtually instantaneously. If it doesn't, customers are unhappy--and sometimes lives are put at risk. When complex software underperforms or fails, software engineers need to identify and address the root causes. This is difficult and, historically, few tools have been available to help. In Understanding Software Dynamics, performance expert Richard L. Sites tackles the problem head on, offering expert methods and advanced tools for understanding complex, time-constrained software dynamics, improving reliability and troubleshooting challenging performance problems. Sites draws on several decades of experience pioneering software performance optimization, as well as extensive experience teaching graduate-level developers. He introduces principles and techniques for use in any environment, from embedded devices to datacenters, illuminating them with examples based on x86 or ARM processors running Linux and linked by Ethernet. He also guides readers through building and applying a powerful, new, extremely low-overhead open-source software tool, KUtrace, to precisely trace executions on every CPU core. Using insights gleaned from this tool, readers can apply nuanced solutions--not merely brute-force techniques such as turning off caches or cores. Measure and address issues associated with CPUs, memory, disk/SSD, networks, and their interactions Fix programs that are always too slow, and those that sometimes lag for no apparent reason Design useful observability, logging, and time-stamping capabilities into your code Reason more effectively about performance data to see why reality differs from expectations Identify problems such as excess execution, slow instruction execution, waiting for resources, and software locks Understanding Software Dynamics will be valuable to experienced software professionals, including application and OS developers, hardware and system architects, real-time system designers, and game developers, as well as advanced students. Register your book for convenient access to downloads, updates, and/or corrections as they become available. See inside book for details.

The book wraps up with a look at the legal effects--both positive and negative--of open source/free software licensing.

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

Open Source Software Development offers the first serious (and academically rigorous) study of the OSS phenomenon. The authors examine several key aspects of OSS, for example: Definitions of OSS and Free Software, including a comprehensive guide to both OSS and non-OSS software licences. Profiles of key OSS products, projects, companies and organisations. Analysis of the technological motivations for OSS development, with explicit reference to the possibility of OSS addressing the "software crisis."

Salary surveys worldwide regularly place software architect in the top 10 best jobs, yet no real guide exists to help developers become architects. Until now. This book provides the first comprehensive overview of software architecture’s many aspects. Aspiring and existing architects alike will examine architectural characteristics, architectural patterns, component determination, diagramming and presenting architecture, evolutionary architecture, and many other topics. Mark Richards and Neal Ford—hands-on practitioners who have taught software architecture classes professionally for years—focus on architecture principles that apply across all technology stacks. You’ll explore software architecture in a modern light, taking into account all the innovations of the past decade. This book examines: Architecture patterns: The technical basis for many architectural decisions Components: Identification, coupling, cohesion, partitioning, and granularity Soft skills: Effective team management, meetings, negotiation, presentations, and more Modernity: Engineering practices and operational approaches that have changed radically in the past few years Architecture as an engineering discipline: Repeatable results, metrics, and concrete valuations that add rigor to software architecture

The second edition of Understanding Search Engines: Mathematical Modeling and Text Retrieval follows the basic premise of the first edition by discussing many of the key design issues for building search engines and emphasizing the important role that applied mathematics can play in improving information retrieval. The authors discuss important data structures, algorithms, and software as well as user-centered issues such as interfaces, manual indexing, and document preparation. Readers will find that the second edition includes significant changes that bring the text up to date on current information retrieval methods. For example, the authors have added a completely new chapter on link-structure algorithms used in search engines such as Google, and the chapter on user interface has been rewritten to specifically focus on search engine usability. To reflect updates in the literature on information retrieval, the authors have added new recommendations for further reading and expanded the bibliography. In addition, the index has been updated and streamlined to make it more reader friendly.