Software Architecture for Busy Developers. Talk and act like a software architect in one weekend

Stéphane Eyskens

Are you a seasoned developer who likes to add value to a project beyond just writing code? Have you realized that good development practices are not enough to make a project successful, and you now want to embrace the bigger picture in the IT landscape? If so, you're ready to become a software architect; someone who can deal with any IT stakeholder as well as add value to the numerous dimensions of software development.The sheer volume of content on software architecture can be overwhelming. However, Software Architecture for Busy Developers is here to help. Written by Stéphane Eyskens, author of The Azure Cloud Native Mapbook, this audiobook guides you through your software architecture journey in a pragmatic way using real-world scenarios. By drawing on over 20 years of consulting experience, Stéphane will help you understand the role of a software architect, without the fluff or unnecessarily complex theory.You'll begin by understanding what non-functional requirements mean and how they concretely impact target architecture. The audiobook then covers different frameworks used across the entire enterprise landscape with the help of use cases and examples. Finally, you'll discover ways in which the cloud is becoming a game changer in the world of software architecture.By the end of this audiobook, you'll have gained a holistic understanding of the architectural landscape, as well as more specific software architecture skills. You'll also be ready to pursue your software architecture journey on your own - and in just one weekend!

Interpretable Machine Learning with Python. Build explainable, fair, and robust high-performance models with hands-on, real-world examples - Second Edition

Serg Masís, Aleksander Molak, Denis Rothman

Interpretable Machine Learning with Python, Second Edition, brings to light the key concepts of interpreting machine learning models by analyzing real-world data, providing you with a wide range of skills and tools to decipher the results of even the most complex models.Build your interpretability toolkit with several use cases, from flight delay prediction to waste classification to COMPAS risk assessment scores. This book is full of useful techniques, introducing them to the right use case. Learn traditional methods, such as feature importance and partial dependence plots to integrated gradients for NLP interpretations and gradient-based attribution methods, such as saliency maps.In addition to the step-by-step code, you’ll get hands-on with tuning models and training data for interpretability by reducing complexity, mitigating bias, placing guardrails, and enhancing reliability.By the end of the book, you’ll be confident in tackling interpretability challenges with black-box models using tabular, language, image, and time series data.

.NET MAUI Cookbook. Build a full-featured app swiftly with MVVM, CRUD, AI, authentication, real-time updates, and more

Alexander Russkov

Think about how much time you usually spend building an app in a technology you're still mastering—grasping new concepts, navigating roadblocks, and even rewriting entire modules as you learn. This book saves you that time, helping you create a modern .NET MAUI application like a pro.The chapters address a wide range of tasks and concepts essential for real-world apps, including UI best practices and advanced tips, MVVM, dependency injection, performance, and memory profiling. Since real-world applications often go beyond frontend development, this book also explores integration with backend services for authentication, data processing, synchronization, and real-time updates. Additionally, you’ll learn to implement multiple AI integration strategies, all without any prior machine learning experience.Mastery comes with practice, so the book is organized with step-by-step recipes, each tackling a specific task. Each recipe includes detailed explanations to help you apply what you're learning to your own unique projects.By the end of this book, you'll have developed the skills to build high-performance, interactive cross-platform applications with .NET MAUI, saving valuable time on your future projects.

The Complete Power BI Interview Guide. A modern approach to acing the data analyst interview and landing your dream job

Sandielly Ortega Polanco, Gogula Aryalingam, Abu Bakar Nisar Alvi

The Complete Power Interview Guide helps you excel in a Power BI interview, secure desired roles, and be ready with the knowledge and skills to ace your role from the first day. Whether you're beginning your career journey or transitioning into a data analytics role, this guide offers hands-on skills and interview questions you need to succeed as a BI or data analyst. This book also offers supplemental content for PowerBI certification exams like PL-300. The book will equip you with the knowledge and strategies to effectively navigate the competitive job market. From creating an outstanding online professional profile to optimizing your resume and building a compelling work portfolio, you'll learn how to establish a strong personal brand. The essentials of Power BI, including data preparation, data modeling, DAX programming, expert report development, and impactful storytelling, are covered in-depth through real-world examples and valuable tips.By the end of this book, you'll have the confidence to interview for Power BI roles, navigate technical assessments, answer behavioral questions, and tackle case studies. You’ll have gained applied knowledge and the competitive edge needed to succeed in the data analytics job market and stay ahead of industry trends for career advancement.

Learning GDScript by Developing a Game with Godot 4. A fun introduction to programming in GDScript 2.0 and game development using the Godot Engine

Sander Vanhove

In the digital landscape driven by interactive experiences, the demand for creative individuals with the skills to create captivating games has never been higher. Written by Sander Vanhove, a seasoned game developer with over 20 games to his credit, this book will serve as your entry point into game development, showing you how to leverage the powerful features of the open-source, versatile GDScript 2.0 to develop your ideas, from simple platformers to complex RPGs.Whether you're an aspiring game developer, a hobbyist seeking a creative outlet, or simply someone intrigued by the world of game programming, this book will guide you through the intricacies of the Godot 4 game engine. Starting with a primer on the fundamentals of programming, you’ll cover everything from data to logic, while familiarizing yourself with Godot’s built-in tools such as the physics engine, navigation, and cameras. As you progress, you’ll unlock deeper insights into more advanced tools that will take your programming to the next level. Aided by easy-to-follow step-by-step tutorials, examples, exercises, and experiments, you’ll seamlessly integrate this newfound knowledge to create a Vampire Survivor-like game from scratch.By the end of this book, you’ll have become proficient in leveraging the Godot 4 game engine to bring your gaming visions to life.

ChatGPT for Cybersecurity Cookbook. Learn practical generative AI recipes to supercharge your cybersecurity skills

Clint Bodungen, Aaron Crow

Are you ready to unleash the potential of AI-driven cybersecurity? This cookbook takes you on a journey toward enhancing your cybersecurity skills, whether you’re a novice or a seasoned professional. By leveraging cutting-edge generative AI and large language models such as ChatGPT, you'll gain a competitive advantage in the ever-evolving cybersecurity landscape.ChatGPT for Cybersecurity Cookbook shows you how to automate and optimize various cybersecurity tasks, including penetration testing, vulnerability assessments, risk assessment, and threat detection. Each recipe demonstrates step by step how to utilize ChatGPT and the OpenAI API to generate complex commands, write code, and even create complete tools. You’ll discover how AI-powered cybersecurity can revolutionize your approach to security, providing you with new strategies and techniques for tackling challenges. As you progress, you’ll dive into detailed recipes covering attack vector automation, vulnerability scanning, GPT-assisted code analysis, and more. By learning to harness the power of generative AI, you'll not only expand your skillset but also increase your efficiency.By the end of this cybersecurity book, you’ll have the confidence and knowledge you need to stay ahead of the curve, mastering the latest generative AI tools and techniques in cybersecurity.

Generative AI Art. Unleash Your Creativity with Generative AI Art for Beginners

Oliver Theobald

The course introduces the basic concepts of artificial intelligence and its application in art, making it accessible even to those without a technical background. This foundation paves the way for exploring the nuances of effective prompt crafting, a critical skill for generating bespoke AI artwork.The course focuses on hands-on demonstrations with leading AI art software, including Craiyon and Midjourney, offering step-by-step guides to harness these tools effectively. Through practical examples, learners will understand how to navigate image prompts, masking techniques, framing, and lighting to enhance the visual appeal of their creations. The significance of navigating these elements is underscored, highlighting their role in achieving consistency and originality in AI-generated art.The course wraps up by delving into the remixing of popular art styles, the art of creating compelling text prompts, and the critical aspects of image rights, ethics, privacy, and originality in the digital art space. By concluding with recommended resources, learners are equipped to continue their journey in AI art, fueled by inspiration and a solid understanding of the field's possibilities and responsibilities.

MuleSoft for Salesforce Developers. A complete guide for achieving Mulesoft certification readiness and building AI-driven API solutions - Second Edition

Akshata Sawant, Arul Christhuraj Alphonse

Salesforce developers often need help with complex integrations to manage multi-cloud environments, data mapping, data security, API scalability, and real-time integration issues. Written by industry veterans with 20+ years of experience, this revised edition will help you overcome these challenges and unlock data with MuleSoft.In this second edition, you’ll learn about MuleSoft’s newest IDE (aka Anypoint Code Builder) and its tools and capabilities. The chapters will show you how to use AI-enabled APIs to maximize productivity, integration of Data Cloud with MuleSoft, Mule APIs with AI agents, and Mule AI Chain connectors. You’ll grasp the fundamentals of APIs and integration and confidently design your APIs, while also utilizing a no-code visual editor for API design to build your Mule applications using MuleSoft’s Anypoint Code Builder. The chapters will teach you about data transformation, API management, deployment models, and MuleSoft’s security features. Progressively, you’ll leverage MuleSoft connectors to integrate with Salesforce, Data Cloud, and other systems. You’ll explore AI-driven integrations and automation, and get practical tips to ace MuleSoft interviews and achieve MCD Level 1 certification.By the end of this book, you’ll be able to implement the entire API lifecycle and manage complex integrations with MuleSoft like a pro.

Data Analytics for Marketing. A practical guide to analyzing marketing data using Python

Guilherme Diaz-Bérrio

Most marketing professionals are familiar with various sources of customer data that promise insights for success. There are extensive sources of data, from customer surveys to digital marketing data. Moreover, there is an increasing variety of tools and techniques to shape data, from small to big data. However, having the right knowledge and understanding the context of how to use data and tools is crucial.In this book, you’ll learn how to give context to your data and turn it into useful information. You’ll understand how and where to use a tool or dataset for a specific question, exploring the what and why questions to provide real value to your stakeholders. Using Python, this book will delve into the basics of analytics and causal inference. Then, you’ll focus on visualization and presentation, followed by understanding guidelines on how to present and condense large amounts of information into KPIs. After learning how to plan ahead and forecast, you’ll delve into customer analytics and insights. Finally, you’ll measure the effectiveness of your marketing efforts and derive insights for data-driven decision-making.By the end of this book, you’ll understand the tools you need to use on specific datasets to provide context and shape your data, as well as to gain information to boost your marketing efforts.

Salesforce B2C Solution Architect's Handbook. Leverage Salesforce to create scalable and cohesive business-to-consumer experiences - Second Edition

Mike King, Melissa Murphy

In today’s competitive landscape, the ability to create a unified view of the customer and turn data into actionable insights is a game-changer for businesses. With Salesforce B2C Solution Architect's Handbook, you’ll gain a deeper understanding of the integration options and products that help you deliver value for organizations. The book will guide you through the tools, techniques, and scenarios needed to confidently tackle the B2C Solution Architect exam. You’ll start by building a robust understanding of each component within the Customer 360 ecosystem, diving into their capabilities, data models, and governance structures. As you progress, you'll explore the role of a B2C solution architect in planning critical requirements and implementation sequences to avoid costly reworks and unnecessary delays. You’ll learn about the available options for integrating products with the Salesforce ecosystem and demonstrate best practices for data modeling across Salesforce products and beyond. By the end of this journey, you’ll not only be prepared to ace the exam but also to excel as a Salesforce B2C Solution Architect, ready to shape the future of customer engagement.

Modern Full-Stack Web Development with ASP.NET Core. A project-based guide to building web applications with ASP.NET Core 9 and JavaScript frameworks

Alexandre Malavasi

In the ASP.NET Core ecosystem, choosing the right JavaScript framework is key to addressing diverse project requirements. Witten by a four-time Microsoft MVP with 16 years of software development experience, this book is your comprehensive guide to mastering full-stack development, combining ASP.NET Core’s robust backend capabilities with the dynamic frontend power of Vue.js, Angular, and React.This book uses ASP.NET Core to teach you best practices for integrating modern JavaScript frameworks, and creating responsive, high-performance applications that deliver seamless client–server interactions and scalable RESTful APIs. In addition to building expertise in ASP.NET Core’s core strengths, such as API security, architecture principles, and performance optimization, the chapters will help you develop the essential frontend skills needed for full-stack development. Sections on Blazor take a C#-based approach to creating interactive UIs, showcasing ASP.NET Core’s flexibility in handling both server and client-side needs.By the end of this book, you will have a complete toolkit for designing, deploying, and maintaining complex full-stack applications, along with practical knowledge of both backend and frontend development.

Low Poly 3D Modeling in Blender. Kickstart your career as a 3D artist by learning how to create low poly assets and scenes from scratch

Samuel Sullins

Step into the world of low poly 3D art with Low Poly 3D Modeling in Blender—your entry point into Blender and mastering the fundamentals of 3D art. This beginner-friendly guide ensures that you’re fully prepared for the creative adventure that follows.Through a step-by-step learning process starting with the principles of low poly art, this book gradually immerses you in the intricacies of modeling. As you progress, you’ll gain hands-on experience creating diverse projects ranging from designing a simple 3D crate to rendering complete low poly scenes. The book covers a wide spectrum of topics as you navigate Blender's interface, mastering essential modeling tools and exploring both basic and advanced modeling techniques. Advancing to the final chapters, you’ll find ways to breathe life into your models with material creation and gain practical insights into modeling a variety of low poly objects. From end-to-end scene construction to configuring Blender for rendering high-quality images, you’ll be equipped with the foundational skills to propel your career in 3D modeling and explore the boundless creative possibilities that Blender offers.By the end of this book, you'll have a solid understanding of Blender, 3D modeling, low poly methodologies, material design, 3D rendering techniques, and the broader world of 3D art.

The Kaggle Book. Data analysis and machine learning for competitive data science

Konrad Banachewicz, Luca Massaron, Anthony Goldbloom

Millions of data enthusiasts from around the world compete on Kaggle, the most famous data science competition platform of them all. Participating in Kaggle competitions is a surefire way to improve your data analysis skills, network with an amazing community of data scientists, and gain valuable experience to help grow your career.The first audiobook of its kind, The Kaggle Book assembles in one place the techniques and skills you'll need for success in competitions, data science projects, and beyond. Two Kaggle Grandmasters walk you through modeling strategies you won't easily find elsewhere, and the knowledge they've accumulated along the way. As well as Kaggle-specific tips, you'll learn more general techniques for approaching tasks based on image, tabular, textual data, and reinforcement learning. You'll design better validation schemes and work more comfortably with different evaluation metrics.Whether you want to climb the ranks of Kaggle, build some more data science skills, or improve the accuracy of your existing models, this audiobook is for you.

Using Stable Diffusion with Python. Leverage Python to control and automate high-quality AI image generation using Stable Diffusion

Andrew Zhu (Shudong Zhu), Matthew Fisher

Stable Diffusion is a game-changing AI tool that enables you to create stunning images with code. The author, a seasoned Microsoft applied data scientist and contributor to the Hugging Face Diffusers library, leverages his 15+ years of experience to help you master Stable Diffusion by understanding the underlying concepts and techniques.You’ll be introduced to Stable Diffusion, grasp the theory behind diffusion models, set up your environment, and generate your first image using diffusers. You'll optimize performance, leverage custom models, and integrate community-shared resources like LoRAs, textual inversion, and ControlNet to enhance your creations. Covering techniques such as face restoration, image upscaling, and image restoration, you’ll focus on unlocking prompt limitations, scheduled prompt parsing, and weighted prompts to create a fully customized and industry-level Stable Diffusion app. This book also looks into real-world applications in medical imaging, remote sensing, and photo enhancement. Finally, you'll gain insights into extracting generation data, ensuring data persistence, and leveraging AI models like BLIP for image description extraction.By the end of this book, you'll be able to use Python to generate and edit images and leverage solutions to build Stable Diffusion apps for your business and users.

Data Literacy in Practice. A complete guide to data literacy and making smarter decisions with data through intelligent actions

Angelika Klidas, Kevin Hanegan

Data is more than a mere commodity in our digital world. It is the ebb and flow of our modern existence. Individuals, teams, and enterprises working with data can unlock a new realm of possibilities. And the resultant agility, growth, and inevitable success have one origin—data literacy.This comprehensive guide is written by two data literacy pioneers, each with a thorough footprint within the data and analytics commercial world and lectures at top universities in the US and the Netherlands. Complete with best practices, practical models, and real-world examples, Data Literacy in Practice will help you start making your data work for you by building your understanding of data literacy basics and accelerating your journey to independently uncovering insights.You’ll learn the four-pillar model that underpins all data and analytics and explore concepts such as measuring data quality, setting up a pragmatic data management environment, choosing the right graphs for your readers, and questioning your insights.By the end of the book, you'll be equipped with a combination of skills and mindset as well as with tools and frameworks that will allow you to find insights and meaning within your data for data-informed decision making.

Beginning C++ Game Programming. Learn C++ from scratch by building fun games - Third Edition

John Horton

Always dreamed of creating your own games? With the third edition of Beginning C++ Game Programming, you can turn that dream into reality! This beginner-friendly guide is updated and improved to include the latest features of VS 2022, SFML, and modern C++20 programming techniques. You'll get a fun introduction to game programming by building four fully playable games of increasing complexity. You'll build clones of popular games such as Timberman, Pong, a Zombie survival shooter, and an endless runner.The book starts by covering the basics of programming. You'll study key C++ topics, such as object-oriented programming (OOP) and C++ pointers and get acquainted with the Standard Template Library (STL). The book helps you learn about collision detection techniques and game physics by building a Pong game. As you build games, you'll also learn exciting game programming concepts such as vertex arrays, directional sound (spatialization), OpenGL programmable shaders, spawning objects, and much more. You’ll dive deep into game mechanics and implement input handling, levelling up a character, and simple enemy AI. Finally, you'll explore game design patterns to enhance your C++ game programming skills.By the end of the book, you'll have gained the knowledge you need to build your own games with exciting features from scratch.