Books about Best practice from Amazon.com

For more than a decade, Steve McConnell, one of the premier authors and voices in the software community, has helped change the way developers write code--and produce better software Now his classic book, CODE COMPLETE, has been fully updated and revised with best practices in the art and science of constructing software. Whether you're a new developer seeking a sound introduction to the practice of software development or a veteran exploring strategic new approaches to problem solving, you'll find a wealth of practical suggestions and methods for strengthening your skills. Topics include design, applying good techniques to construction, eliminating errors, planning, managing construction activities, and relating personal character to superior software. This new edition features fully updated information on programming techniques, including the emergence of Web-style programming, and integrated coverage of object-oriented design. You'll also find new code examples--both good and bad--in C++, Microsoft(r) Visual Basic(r), C#, and Java, though the focus is squarely on techniques and practices..
Price: $26.35 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Raves for the First Edition!

 

“I sure wish I had this book ten years ago. Some might think that I don’t need any Java books, but I need this one.”

–James Gosling, fellow and vice president, Sun Microsystems, Inc.

 

“An excellent book, crammed with good advice on using the Java programming language and object-oriented programming in general ”

–Gilad Bracha, coauthor of The Java™ Language Specification, Third Edition

 

“10/10–anyone aspiring to write good Java code that others will appreciate reading and maintaining should be required to own a copy of this book. This is one of those rare books where the information won’t become obsolete with subsequent releases of the JDK library.”
–Peter Tran, bartender, JavaRanch.com

 

“The best Java book yet written.... Really great; very readable and eminently useful. I can’t say enough good things about this book. At JavaOne 2001, James Gosling said, ‘Go buy this book!’ I’m glad I did, and I couldn’t agree more.”
–Keith Edwards, senior member of research staff, Computer Science Lab at the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), and author of Core JINI (Prentice Hall, 2000)

 

“This is a truly excellent book done by the guy who designed several of the better recent Java platform APIs (including the Collections API).”
–James Clark, technical lead of the XML Working Group during the creation of the XML 1.0 Recommendation, editor of the XPath and XSLT Recommendations

 

“Great content. Analogous to Scott Meyers’ classic Effective C++. If you know the basics of Java, this has to be your next book.”
–Gary K. Evans, OO mentor and consultant, Evanetics, Inc

 

“Josh Bloch gives great insight into best practices that really can only be discovered after years of study and experience.”
–Mark Mascolino, software engineer

 

“This is a superb book. It clearly covers many of the language/platform subtleties and trickery you need to learn to become a real Java master.”
–Victor Wiewiorowski, vice president development and code quality manager, ValueCommerce Co., Tokyo, Japan

 

“I like books that under-promise in their titles and over-deliver in their contents. This book has 57 items of programming advice that are well chosen. Each item reveals a clear, deep grasp of the language. Each one illustrates in simple, practical terms the limits of programming on intuition alone, or taking the most direct path to a solution without fully understanding what the language offers.”

–Michael Ernest, Inkling Research, Inc.

 

“I don’t find many programming books that make me want to read every page–this is one of them.”
–Matt Tucker, chief technical officer, Jive Software

 

“Great how-to resource for the experienced developer.”
–John Zukowski, author of numerous Java technology books

 

“I picked this book up two weeks ago and can safely say I learned more about the Java language in three days of reading than I did in three months of study! An excellent book and a welcome addition to my Java library.”
–Jane Griscti, I/T advisory specialist

Are you looking for a deeper understanding of the Java™ programming language so that you can write code that is clearer, more correct, more robust, and more reusable? Look no further! Effective Java™, Second Edition, brings together seventy-eight indispensable programmer’s rules of thumb: working, best-practice solutions for the programming challenges you encounter every day.

 

This highly anticipated new edition of the classic, Jolt Award-winning work has been thoroughly updated to cover Java SE 5 and Java SE 6 features introduced since the first edition. Bloch explores new design patterns and language idioms, showing you how to make the most of features ranging from generics to enums, annotations to autoboxing.

 

Each chapter in the book consists of several “items” presented in the form of a short, standalone essay that provides specific advice, insight into Java platform subtleties, and outstanding code examples. The comprehensive descriptions and explanations for each item illuminate what to do, what not to do, and why.

 

Highlights include:

• New coverage of generics, enums, annotations, autoboxing, the for-each loop, varargs, concurrency utilities, and much more
• Updated techniques and best practices on classic topics, including objects, classes, libraries, methods, and serialization
• How to avoid the traps and pitfalls of commonly misunderstood subtleties of the language
• Focus on the language and its most fundamental libraries: java.lang, java.util, and, to a lesser extent, java.util.concurrent and java.io

Simply put, Effective Java™, Second Edition, presents the most practical, authoritative guidelines available for writing efficient, well-designed programs.

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Price: $35.89 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Praise for How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of Intangibles in Business

"I love this book. Douglas Hubbard helps us create a path to know the answer to almost any question in business, in science, or in life . . . Hubbard helps us by showing us that when we seek metrics to solve problems, we are really trying to know something better than we know it now. How to Measure Anything provides just the tools most of us need to measure anything better, to gain that insight, to make progress, and to succeed."
-Peter Tippett, PhD, M.D.
Chief Technology Officer at CyberTrust
and inventor of the first antivirus software

"Doug Hubbard has provided an easy-to-read, demystifying explanation of how managers can inform themselves to make less risky, more profitable business decisions. We encourage our clients to try his powerful, practical techniques."
-Peter Schay
EVP and COO of
The Advisory Council

"As a reader you soon realize that actually everything can be measured while learning how to measure only what matters. This book cuts through conventional clichés and business rhetoric and offers practical steps to using measurements as a tool for better decision making. Hubbard bridges the gaps to make college statistics relevant and valuable for business decisions."
-Ray Gilbert
EVP Lucent

"This book is remarkable in its range of measurement applications and its clarity of style. A must-read for every professional who has ever exclaimed, 'Sure, that concept is important, but can we measure it?'"
-Dr. Jack Stenner
Cofounder and CEO of MetraMetrics, Inc..
Price: $24.38 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Designing a good interface isn't easy. Users demand software that is well-behaved, good-looking, and easy to use. Your clients or managers demand originality and a short time to market. Your UI technology -- web applications, desktop software, even mobile devices -- may give you the tools you need, but little guidance on how to use them well.

UI designers over the years have refined the art of interface design, evolving many best practices and reusable ideas. If you learn these, and understand why the best user interfaces work so well, you too can design engaging and usable interfaces with less guesswork and more confidence.

"Designing Interfaces" captures those best practices as design patterns -- solutions to common design problems, tailored to the situation at hand. Each pattern contains practical advice that you can put to use immediately, plus a variety of examples illustrated in full color. You'll get recommendations, design alternatives, and warnings on when not to use them.

Each chapter's introduction describes key design concepts that are often misunderstood, such as affordances, visual hierarchy, navigational distance, and the use of color. These give you a deeper understanding of why the patterns work, and how to apply them with more insight.

A book can't design an interface for you -- no foolproof design process is given here -- but "Designing Interfaces" does give you concrete ideas that you can mix and recombine as you see fit. Experienced designers can use it as a sourcebook of ideas. Novice designers will find a roadmap to the world of interface and interaction design, with enough guidance to start using these patterns immediately..
Price: $28.94 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Get field-tested best practices and proven techniques for designing, deploying, operating, and optimizing Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0. Part of the new Best Practices series for IT professionals from Microsoft Press®, this guide is written by leading SharePoint MVPs and Microsoft SharePoint team members who ve worked extensively with real-world deployments and customers. You ll find out how to deploy the software, design your environment, manage content, analyze and view data, perform disaster recovery, monitor performance, and more. You'll learn how to create SharePoint sites that help your organization collaborate, take advantage of business insights, and improve productivity with practical insights from the experts.

Key Book Benefits:

Delivers authoritative, field-tested best practices for working with Microsoft SharePoint solutions Covers the full IT lifecycle, from planning, design, and deployment through operations and support Includes a CD with job aids, utilities, and a fully searchable eBook.
Price: $34.20 [Notify me when price goes down.]

This book is your indispensable guide to cutting-edge CSS developmentall you need to work your way up to CSS professional You'll learn how to:

• Plan, organize, and maintain your stylesheets more effectively
• Apply the secrets of liquid, elastic, and hybrid layouts
• Create flickr-style image maps, remote rollovers, and other advanced CSS features
• Lay out forms using pure CSS
• Recognize common browser bugs, and how to fix them

While CSS is a relatively simple technology to learn, it is a difficult one to master. When you first start developing sites using CSS, you will come across all kinds of infuriating browser bugs and inconsistencies. It sometimes feels like there are a million and one different techniques to master, spread across a bewildering array of websites. The range of possibilities seems endless and makes for a steep and daunting learning curve. By bringing all of the latest tips, tricks, and techniques together in one handy reference, this book demystifies the secrets of CSS and makes the journey to CSS mastery as simple and painless as possible. While most books concentrate on basic skills, this one is different, assuming that you already know the basics and why you should be using CSS in your work, and concentrating mainly on advanced techniques. It begins with a brief recap of CSS fundamentals such as the importance of meaningful markup, how to structure and maintain your code, and how the CSS layout model really works. With the basics out of the way, each subsequent chapter details a particular aspect of CSS-based design. Through a series of easy-to-follow tutorials, you will learn practical CSS techniques you can immediately start using in your daily work. Browser inconsistencies are the thorn in most CSS developers' sides, so we have dedicated two whole chapters to CSS hacks, filters, and bug fixing, as well as looking at image replacement; professional link, form, and list styling; pure CSS layouts; and much more. All of these techniques are then put into practice in two beautifully designed case studies, written by two of the world's best CSS designers, Simon Collison and Cameron Moll. Summary of Contents:

• Chapter 1: Setting the Foundations
• Chapter 2: Visual Formatting Model Recap
• Chapter 3: Background Images and Image Replacement
• Chapter 4: Styling Links
• Chapter 5: Styling Lists and Creating Nav Bars
• Chapter 6: Styling Forms and Data Tables
• Chapter 7: Layout
• Chapter 8: Hacks and Filters
• Chapter 9: Bugs and Bug Fixing
• Case Study 1: More Than Doodles
• Case Study 2: Tuscany Luxury Resorts

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Price: $17.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Threads are a fundamental part of the Java platform As multicore processors become the norm, using concurrency effectively becomes essential for building high-performance applications. Java SE 5 and 6 are a huge step forward for the development of concurrent applications, with improvements to the Java Virtual Machine to support high-performance, highly scalable concurrent classes and a rich set of new concurrency building blocks. In Java Concurrency in Practice, the creators of these new facilities explain not only how they work and how to use them, but also the motivation and design patterns behind them. However, developing, testing, and debugging multithreaded programs can still be very difficult; it is all too easy to create concurrent programs that appear to work, but fail when it matters most: in production, under heavy load. Java Concurrency in Practice arms readers with both the theoretical underpinnings and concrete techniques for building reliable, scalable, maintainable concurrent applications. Rather than simply offering an inventory of concurrency APIs and mechanisms, it provides design rules, patterns, and mental models that make it easier to build concurrent programs that are both correct and performant. This book covers:

• Basic concepts of concurrency and thread safety
• Techniques for building and composing thread-safe classes
• Using the concurrency building blocks in java.util.concurrent
• Performance optimization dos and don'ts
• Testing concurrent programs
• Advanced topics such as atomic variables, nonblocking algorithms, and the Java Memory Model

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Price: $28.93 [Notify me when price goes down.]