Deep Reinforcement Learning Hands-On. Apply modern RL methods to practical problems of chatbots, robotics, discrete optimization, web automation, and more - Second Edition

Maxim Lapan

Deep Reinforcement Learning Hands-On, Second Edition is an updated and expanded version of the bestselling guide to the very latest reinforcement learning (RL) tools and techniques. It provides you with an introduction to the fundamentals of RL, along with the hands-on ability to code intelligent learning agents to perform a range of practical tasks.With six new chapters devoted to a variety of up-to-the-minute developments in RL, including discrete optimization (solving the Rubik's Cube), multi-agent methods, Microsoft's TextWorld environment, advanced exploration techniques, and more, you will come away from this book with a deep understanding of the latest innovations in this emerging field.In addition, you will gain actionable insights into such topic areas as deep Q-networks, policy gradient methods, continuous control problems, and highly scalable, non-gradient methods. You will also discover how to build a real hardware robot trained with RL for less than $100 and solve the Pong environment in just 30 minutes of training using step-by-step code optimization.In short, Deep Reinforcement Learning Hands-On, Second Edition, is your companion to navigating the exciting complexities of RL as it helps you attain experience and knowledge through real-world examples.

Getting Started with hapi.js. Click here to enter text

John Brett, Dave Stevens

This book will introduce hapi.js and walk you through the creation of your first working application using the out-of-the-box features hapi.js provides. Packed withreal-world problems and examples, this book introduces some of the basic concepts of hapi.js and Node.js and takes you through the typical journey you'll face whendeveloping an application. Starting with easier concepts such as routing requests, building APIs serving JSON, using templates to build websites and applications, andconnecting databases, we then move on to more complexproblems such as authentication, model validation, caching, and techniques for structuring your codebase to scale gracefully. You will also develop skills to ensure yourapplication's reliability through testing, code coverage, and logging.By the end of this book, you'll be equipped with all the skills you need to build your first fully featured application. This book will be invaluable if you are investigating Node.js frameworks or planning on using hapi.js in your next project.

Atlassian DevOps Toolchain Cookbook. Recipes for building, automating, and managing applications with Jira, Bitbucket Pipelines, and more

Robert Wen, Alex Ortiz, Edward Gaile, Rodney Nissen

Implementing DevOps practices and toolchains for automated testing and deployment can accelerate product development with minimal errors in the production environment. However, creating DevOps toolchains by integrating tools from various vendors presents challenges for both administrators and developers. Written by four well-known experts from the Atlassian community, this book addresses the complexities of DevOps toolchain creation and integration by leveraging Atlassian’s Open DevOps solution.Starting with a holistic overview of the DevOps and Atlassian Open DevOps solution, you’ll learn to integrate Jira with other tools. You’ll then find out how to create and integrate a CI/CD pipeline in Bitbucket for automated testing and deployment to Docker containers. With step-by-step guidance, you’ll connect Jira and Bitbucket with other tools, such as Snyk for security and SonarQube for testing, to form an extensive toolchain. You’ll also learn how Compass uses CheckOps for observability and how to use Confluence for documentation and reporting. Finally, you’ll leverage Opsgenie’s ChatOps functionality to enhance collaboration between developers and operations teams.By the end of this book, you’ll be able to establish your DevOps toolchain by integrating Atlassian tools to automate and optimize the software development lifecycle and beyond.

An Atypical ASP.NET Core 5 Design Patterns Guide. A SOLID adventure into architectural principles, design patterns, .NET 5, and C#

Carl-Hugo Marcotte, Abdelhamid Zebdi

Design patterns are a set of solutions to many of the common problems occurring in software development. Knowledge of these design patterns helps developers and professionals to craft software solutions of any scale.ASP.NET Core 5 Design Patterns starts by exploring basic design patterns, architectural principles, dependency injection, and other ASP.NET Core mechanisms. You’ll explore the component scale as you discover patterns oriented toward small chunks of the software, and then move to application-scale patterns and techniques to understand higher-level patterns and how to structure the application as a whole. The book covers a range of significant GoF (Gangs of Four) design patterns such as strategy, singleton, decorator, facade, and composite. The chapters are organized based on scale and topics, allowing you to start small and build on a strong base, the same way that you would develop a program. With the help of use cases, the book will show you how to combine design patterns to display alternate usage and help you feel comfortable working with a variety of design patterns. Finally, you’ll advance to the client side to connect the dots and make ASP.NET Core a viable full-stack alternative.By the end of the book, you’ll be able to mix and match design patterns and have learned how to think about architecture and how it works.

Responsive Design High Performance

Dewald C Els, Dewald Els

The Professional ScrumMaster's Handbook. A collection of tips, tricks, and war stories to help the professional ScrumMaster break the chains of traditional organization and management

Stacia Viscardi

A natural and difficult tension exists between a project team (supply) and its customer (demand); a professional ScrumMaster relaxes this tension using the Scrum framework so that the team arrives at the best possible outcome.The Professional ScrumMaster's Handbook is a practical, no-nonsense guide to helping you become an inspiring and effective ScrumMaster known for getting results.This book goes into great detail about why it seems like you're fighting traditional management culture every step of the way. You will explore the three roles of Scrum and how, working in harmony, they can deliver a product in the leanest way possible. You'll understand that even though there is no room for a project manager in Scrum, there are certain “management” aspects you should be familiar with to help you along the way. Getting a team to manage itself and take responsibility is no easy feat; this book will show you how to earn trust by displaying it and inspiring courage in a team every day.The Professional ScrumMaster's Handbook will challenge you to dig deep within yourself to improve your mindset, practices, and values in order to build and support the very best agile teams.

Learn Python by Building Data Science Applications. A fun, project-based guide to learning Python 3 while building real-world apps

Philipp Kats, David Katz

Python is the most widely used programming language for building data science applications. Complete with step-by-step instructions, this book contains easy-to-follow tutorials to help you learn Python and develop real-world data science projects. The “secret sauce” of the book is its curated list of topics and solutions, put together using a range of real-world projects, covering initial data collection, data analysis, and production.This Python book starts by taking you through the basics of programming, right from variables and data types to classes and functions. You’ll learn how to write idiomatic code and test and debug it, and discover how you can create packages or use the range of built-in ones. You’ll also be introduced to the extensive ecosystem of Python data science packages, including NumPy, Pandas, scikit-learn, Altair, and Datashader. Furthermore, you’ll be able to perform data analysis, train models, and interpret and communicate the results. Finally, you’ll get to grips with structuring and scheduling scripts using Luigi and sharing your machine learning models with the world as a microservice.By the end of the book, you’ll have learned not only how to implement Python in data science projects, but also how to maintain and design them to meet high programming standards.

The Ultimate Roblox Game Building Cookbook. Design immersive experiences with easy-to-follow recipes for world and game development

Taylor Field-Draper, Natasha West

Roblox is a massively popular online gaming platform, but it can be challenging to maneuver for beginners who don’t know where to start, as well as seasoned developers who tend to struggle with limited scripting tools that make transitioning from other platforms such as Unity more difficult.The Ultimate Roblox Game Building Cookbook is an invaluable asset for any Roblox developer looking to take their skills to the next level. With a wide range of recipes, this Roblox book covers everything from the basics of game development on the platform to advanced techniques for creating immersive experiences.As you progress through the chapters, you'll gain a deep understanding of the proper workflow and building methods that will enable you to create extraordinary virtual worlds. You'll gain insights into creating complex game mechanics, such as multiplayer games, working with textures, and special effects in games. This cookbook will also provide you with tips from top Roblox developers, as well as valuable guidance on how to monetize your games and stay up to date with the latest trends in the Roblox development community.By the end of this book, you’ll have gained a comprehensive understanding of Roblox game development and design.

Natural Language Processing with Java. Explore various approaches to organize and extract useful text from unstructured data using Java

Richard M. Reese

Data Engineering with Alteryx. Helping data engineers apply DataOps practices with Alteryx

Paul Houghton

Alteryx is a GUI-based development platform for data analytic applications.Data Engineering with Alteryx will help you leverage Alteryx’s code-free aspects which increase development speed while still enabling you to make the most of the code-based skills you have.This book will teach you the principles of DataOps and how they can be used with the Alteryx software stack. You’ll build data pipelines with Alteryx Designer and incorporate the error handling and data validation needed for reliable datasets. Next, you’ll take the data pipeline from raw data, transform it into a robust dataset, and publish it to Alteryx Server following a continuous integration process.By the end of this Alteryx book, you’ll be able to build systems for validating datasets, monitoring workflow performance, managing access, and promoting the use of your data sources.

Developing Multi-Platform Apps with Visual Studio Code. Get up and running with VS Code by building multi-platform, cloud-native, and microservices-based apps

Ovais Mehboob Ahmed Khan, Khusro Habib, Chris Dias

Microsoft Visual Studio Code is a powerful, lightweight code editor for modern web and cloud development. It is a source code editor that can be used with a variety of programming languages, which works on multiple platforms such as Linux, Windows, and macOS. This book provides extensive coverage of the tools, functionalities, and extensions available within the VS Code environment that will help you build multi-platform apps with ease.You’ll start with the installation of VS Code and learn about various tools and features that are essential for development. Progressing through the chapters, you'll explore the user interface while understanding tips and tricks for increasing productivity. Next, you’ll delve into VS Code extensions and discover how they can make life easier for developers. Later, the book shows you how to develop a sample application with different programming languages, tools, and runtimes to display how VS code can be used effectively for development, before helping you get to grips with source code version management and deployment on Azure with VS Code. Finally, you’ll build on your skills by focusing on remote development with VS Code.By the end of this book, you’ll have the knowledge you need to use Visual Studio Code as your primary tool for software development.

Nginx HTTP Server. Harness the power of Nginx to make the most of your infrastructure and serve pages faster than ever

Clement Nedelcu

Nginx is a lightweight HTTP server designed for high-traffic websites, with network scalability as the primary objective. With the advent of high speed Internet access, short loading times and fast transfer rates have become a necessity. This free, open source solution will either come as a full replacement of other software such as Apache, or stand in front of your existing infrastructure to improve its overall speed.This book is a detailed guide to setting up Nginx in different ways that correspond to actual production situations: as a standalone server, as a reverse proxy, interacting with applications via FastCGI, and more. In addition, this complete directive reference will be your best friend at all stages of the configuration and maintenance processes.This book is the perfect companion for both Nginx beginners and experienced administrators. For beginners, it will take you through the complete process of setting up this lightweight HTTP server on your system and configuring its various modules so it does exactly what you need quickly and securely. For more experienced administrators, this book provides different approaches that can help you make the most of your current infrastructure. Nginx can be employed in many situations, whether you are looking to construct an entirely new web-serving architecture or simply want to integrate an efficient tool to optimize your site loading speeds.

Managing Data Integrity for Finance. Discover practical data quality management strategies for finance analysts and data professionals

Jane Sarah Lat

Data integrity management plays a critical role in the success and effectiveness of organizations trying to use financial and operational data to make business decisions. Unfortunately, there is a big gap between the analysis and management of finance data along with the proper implementation of complex data systems across various organizations.The first part of this book covers the important concepts for data quality and data integrity relevant to finance, data, and tech professionals. The second part then focuses on having you use several data tools and platforms to manage and resolve data integrity issues on financial data. The last part of this the book covers intermediate and advanced solutions, including managed cloud-based ledger databases, database locks, and artificial intelligence, to manage the integrity of financial data in systems and databases.After finishing this hands-on book, you will be able to solve various data integrity issues experienced by organizations globally.

Learn Robotics Programming. Build and control AI-enabled autonomous robots using the Raspberry Pi and Python - Second Edition

Danny Staple

We live in an age where the most complex or repetitive tasks are automated. Smart robots have the potential to revolutionize how we perform all kinds of tasks with high accuracy and efficiency. With this second edition of Learn Robotics Programming, you'll see how a combination of the Raspberry Pi and Python can be a great starting point for robot programming.The book starts by introducing you to the basic structure of a robot and shows you how to design, build, and program it. As you make your way through the book, you'll add different outputs and sensors, learn robot building skills, and write code to add autonomous behavior using sensors and a camera. You'll also be able to upgrade your robot with Wi-Fi connectivity to control it using a smartphone. Finally, you'll understand how you can apply the skills that you've learned to visualize, lay out, build, and code your future robot building projects.By the end of this book, you'll have built an interesting robot that can perform basic artificial intelligence operations and be well versed in programming robots and creating complex robotics projects using what you've learned.

Cracking the Data Engineering Interview. Land your dream job with the help of resume-building tips, over 100 mock questions, and a unique portfolio

Kedeisha Bryan, Taamir Ransome

Preparing for a data engineering interview can often get overwhelming due to the abundance of tools and technologies, leaving you struggling to prioritize which ones to focus on. This hands-on guide provides you with the essential foundational and advanced knowledge needed to simplify your learning journey.The book begins by helping you gain a clear understanding of the nature of data engineering and how it differs from organization to organization. As you progress through the chapters, you’ll receive expert advice, practical tips, and real-world insights on everything from creating a resume and cover letter to networking and negotiating your salary. The chapters also offer refresher training on data engineering essentials, including data modeling, database architecture, ETL processes, data warehousing, cloud computing, big data, and machine learning. As you advance, you’ll gain a holistic view by exploring continuous integration/continuous development (CI/CD), data security, and privacy. Finally, the book will help you practice case studies, mock interviews, as well as behavioral questions.By the end of this book, you will have a clear understanding of what is required to succeed in an interview for a data engineering role.

Database Design and Modeling with Google Cloud. Learn database design and development to take your data to applications, analytics, and AI

Abirami Sukumaran, Priyanka Vergadia, Bagirathi Narayanan

In the age of lightning-speed delivery, customers want everything developed, built, and delivered at high speed and at scale. Knowledge, design, and choice of database is critical in that journey, but there is no one-size-fits-all solution. This book serves as a comprehensive and practical guide for data professionals who want to design and model their databases efficiently. The book begins by taking you through business, technical, and design considerations for databases. Next, it takes you on an immersive structured database deep dive for both transactional and analytical real-world use cases using Cloud SQL, Spanner, and BigQuery. As you progress, you’ll explore semi-structured and unstructured database considerations with practical applications using Firestore, cloud storage, and more. You’ll also find insights into operational considerations for databases and the database design journey for taking your data to AI with Vertex AI APIs and generative AI examples. By the end of this book, you will be well-versed in designing and modeling data and databases for your applications using Google Cloud.