Books about Reliability from Amazon.com

Even bad code can function But if code isn’t clean, it can bring a development organization to its knees. Every year, countless hours and significant resources are lost because of poorly written code. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Noted software expert Robert C. Martin presents a revolutionary paradigm with Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship. Martin has teamed up with his colleagues from Object Mentor to distill their best agile practice of cleaning code “on the fly” into a book that will instill within you the values of a software craftsman and make you a better programmer—but only if you work at it.

What kind of work will you be doing? You’ll be reading code—lots of code. And you will be challenged to think about what’s right about that code, and what’s wrong with it. More importantly, you will be challenged to reassess your professional values and your commitment to your craft.

Clean Code is divided into three parts. The first describes the principles, patterns, and practices of writing clean code. The second part consists of several case studies of increasing complexity. Each case study is an exercise in cleaning up code—of transforming a code base that has some problems into one that is sound and efficient. The third part is the payoff: a single chapter containing a list of heuristics and “smells” gathered while creating the case studies. The result is a knowledge base that describes the way we think when we write, read, and clean code.

Readers will come away from this book understanding

• How to tell the difference between good and bad code
• How to write good code and how to transform bad code into good code
• How to create good names, good functions, good objects, and good classes
• How to format code for maximum readability
• How to implement complete error handling without obscuring code logic
• How to unit test and practice test-driven development

This book is a must for any developer, software engineer, project manager, team lead, or systems analyst with an interest in producing better code.

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Price: $31.19 [Notify me when price goes down.]

"...perhaps the most comprehensive book on the subject we've ever seen. It's incredibly well researched, well written, and jam packed with useful information "
--Josh Norem, Reviews Editor, Maximum PC
 
Upgrading and Repairing PCs is the definitive guide to the inner workings of your PC. Whether you're adding a faster processor or bigger hard drive, tracking down a problem, or just want to understand how the components of your computer work together, this book explains everything you need to know. Trust the one book that has become the de facto standard among PC professionals and enthusiasts around the world.
 
World-renowned PC hardware expert Scott Mueller has taught thousands in his week-long seminars and millions through his books, videos, and magazine articles. Major changes in the PC hardware industry--including coverage of new Core 2 processors from Intel, Socket AM2 processors from AMD, and significant advances in motherboard chipsets, Blu-ray, and HD-DVD--make Upgrading and Repairing PCs, 18th Edition, an indispensable addition to every serious computer user's bookshelf...that is, if it ever leaves their desks. Readers from around the world trust their computers to Scott. Upgrading and Repairing PCs is found on the desks of teachers, students, hobbyists, repair technicians, and even law enforcement agencies that use this book to aid them in tracking criminals.
 
New in This Book

• Deep coverage of the new Core 2 (8th gen or "886") processors, featuring the new "Core Microarchitecture"
• Cutting edge coverage of quad-core desktop (Kentsfield) processor versions
• Detailed coverage of AMD’s Socket AM2 processors
• Coverage of evolutionary changes in chipsets, including new versions of Intel's 9xx series chipsets and new 3x series Intel chipsets; coverage of new chipsets from Nvidia, VIA, and SiS has also been added
• Coverage of the new DTX and Mini-DTX motherboard form factors from the newly formed alliance between AMD and ATI
• Beefed-up coverage of Blu-ray and HD-DVD drives/players
• Extensive coverage of new GPUs in addition to heavy-duty coverage of SLI and Crossfire
• Building a PC from scratch--from assembling the hardware to BIOS setup and installing Microsoft Windows XP or Vista

 
On the DVD
DVD contains 2 hours of all new, studio-quality video--playable in your set-top DVD player and your computer! Scott digs deep into networking, showing all the components needed to build a SOHO (Small Office Home Office) network. Coverage includes network adapters, routers, switches, access points, cable/DSL modems, and cabling. Upgrading an existing network to gigabit speeds is also covered, as well as the latest wireless network technology. The DVD also contains a previously published edition of the book as well as technical reference material, a glossary, and an acronym index. Whether you’re building a hot new PC for home or work, or nursing an aging and ailing PC back to health, these materials prove to be worth their weight in gold to the serious PC technician or hobbyist.
 
www.upgradingandrepairingpcs.com
If you don’t have a DVD player or only have a set-top DVD, visit www.upgradingandrepairingpcs.com to download all the video from the DVD in Windows Media Player format as well as the PDFs and other materials on the DVD! Plus, check out monthly articles, FAQs, and video from earlier editions you might have missed!
 
Introduction 1
1    Development of the PC 7
2    PC Components, Features and System Design 25
3    Microprocessor Types and Specifications 39
4    Motherboards and Buses 235
5    BIOS 441
6    Memory 509
7    The ATA/IDE Interface 581
8    Magnetic Storage Principles 637
9    Hard Disk Storage 663
10    Removable Storage 707
11    Optical Storage 747
12    Physical Drive Installation and Configuration 851
13    Video Hardware 885
14    Audio Hardware 987
15    I/O Interfaces from Serial and Parallel to IEEE-1394 and USB 1025
16    Input Devices 1059
17    Internet Connectivity 1103
18    Local Area Networking 1151
19    Power Supplies 1207
20    Building or Upgrading Systems 1295
21    PC Mods: Overclocking and Cooling 1335
22    PC Diagnostics, Testing and Maintenance 1367
 
ON THE DVD:
A    Glossary
B    List of Acronyms and Abbreviations


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Price: $35.74 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Want your web site to display more quickly? This book presents 14 specific rules that will cut 25% to 50% off response time when users request a page. Author Steve Souders, in his job as Chief Performance Yahoo!, collected these best practices while optimizing some of the most-visited pages on the Web. Even sites that had already been highly optimized, such as Yahoo! Search and the Yahoo! Front Page, were able to benefit from these surprisingly simple performance guidelines. The rules in High Performance Web Sites explain how you can optimize the performance of the Ajax, CSS, JavaScript, Flash, and images that you've already built into your site -- adjustments that are critical for any rich web application. Other sources of information pay a lot of attention to tuning web servers, databases, and hardware, but the bulk of display time is taken up on the browser side and by the communication between server and browser. High Performance Web Sites covers every aspect of that process. Each performance rule is supported by specific examples, and code snippets are available on the book's companion web site. The rules include how to: Make Fewer HTTP Requests Use a Content Delivery Network Add an Expires Header Gzip Components Put Stylesheets at the Top Put Scripts at the Bottom Avoid CSS Expressions Make JavaScript and CSS External Reduce DNS Lookups Minify JavaScript Avoid Redirects Remove Duplicates Scripts Configure ETags Make Ajax Cacheable If you're building pages for high traffic destinations and want to optimize the experience of users visiting your site, this book is indispensable. "If everyone would implement just 20% of Steve's guidelines, the Web would be a dramatically better place.Between this book and Steve's YSlow extension, there's really no excuse for having a sluggish web site anymore." -Joe Hewitt, Developer of Firebug debugger and Mozilla's DOM Inspector "Steve Souders has done a fantastic job of distilling a massive, semi-arcane art down to a set of concise, actionable, pragmatic engineering steps that will change the world of web performance." -Eric Lawrence, Developer of the Fiddler Web Debugger, Microsoft Corporation.
Price: $16.50 [Notify me when price goes down.]

This guide demonstrates how social scientists assess the reliability and validity of empirical measurements. This monograph is a good starting point for those who want to familiarize themselves with the current debates over "appropriate" measurement designs and strategies.

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Price: $14.48 [Notify me when price goes down.]

For over twenty years, Craig Blomberg's The Historical Reliability of the Gospels has provided a useful antidote to many of the toxic effects of skeptical criticism of the Gospels. Offering a calm, balanced overview of the history of Gospel criticism, especially that of the late twentieth century, Blomberg introduces readers to the methods employed by New Testament scholars and shows both the values and limits of those methods. He then delves more deeply into the question of miracles, Synoptic discrepancies and the differences between the Synoptics and John. After an assessment of noncanonical Jesus tradition, he addresses issues of historical method directly.

This new edition has been thoroughly updated in light of new developments with numerous additions to the footnotes and two added appendixes. Readers will find that over the past twenty years, the case for the historical trustworthiness of the Gospels has grown vastly stronger..
Price: $15.50 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Written primarily for undergraduates Systems Analysis & Design courses in CIS and MIS programs   It is designed for courses seeking a streamlined approach to the course due to course duration, lab assignments, or special projects. The text reflects current changes in systems analysis and design. The move to structured analysis and design in the late 1970s was considered to be a revolution in how systems development was conducted. We are undergoing another revolution in systems development now, as we move away from complex, plan-driven development to new approaches called "Agile Methodologies." Although the best known Agile Methodology is eXtreme Programming, there are many other approaches. More and more systems development involves the use of packages in combination with legacy applications and new modules. Coverage of the make versus buy decision and of the multiple sources of software and software components has been moved forward in the book to highlight the salience of these topics.

 

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Price: $99.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Normal Accidents analyzes the social side of technological risk. Charles Perrow argues that the conventional engineering approach to ensuring safety--building in more warnings and safeguards--fails because systems complexity makes failures inevitable. He asserts that typical precautions, by adding to complexity, may help create new categories of accidents. (At Chernobyl, tests of a new safety system helped produce the meltdown and subsequent fire.) By recognizing two dimensions of risk--complex versus linear interactions, and tight versus loose coupling--this book provides a powerful framework for analyzing risks and the organizations that insist we run them.

The first edition fulfilled one reviewer's prediction that it "may mark the beginning of accident research." In the new afterword to this edition Perrow reviews the extensive work on the major accidents of the last fifteen years, including Bhopal, Chernobyl, and the Challenger disaster. The new postscript probes what the author considers to be the "quintessential 'Normal Accident'" of our time: the Y2K computer problem..
Price: $21.67 [Notify me when price goes down.]

For more than two hundred years controversy has raged over the reliability of the Old Testament Questions about the factuality of its colorful stories of heroes, villains, and kings, for example, have led many critics to see the entire Hebrew Bible as little more than pious fiction. In this fascinating new book, noted ancient historian K. A. Kitchen takes strong issue with today's "revisionist" critics and offers a firm foundation for the historicity of the biblical texts.

In a detailed, comprehensive, and entertaining manner, Kitchen draws on an unprecedented range of historical data from the ancient Near East — the Bible's own world — and uses it to soundly reassess both the biblical record and the critics who condemn it. Working back from the latest periods (for which hard evidence is readily available) to the remotest times, Kitchen systematically shows up the many failures of favored arguments against the Bible and marshals pertinent permanent evidence from antiquity's inscriptions and artifacts to demonstrate the basic honesty of the Old Testament writers.

Enhanced with numerous tables, figures, and maps, "On the Reliability of the Old Testament" is a must-read for anyone interested in the question of biblical truth..
Price: $21.95 [Notify me when price goes down.]