Kivy Cookbook. Enhance your skills in developing multi-touch applications with Kivy

Hugo Solis

Deep Reinforcement Learning with Python. Master classic RL, deep RL, distributional RL, inverse RL, and more with OpenAI Gym and TensorFlow - Second Edition

Sudharsan Ravichandiran

With significant enhancements in the quality and quantity of algorithms in recent years, this second edition of Hands-On Reinforcement Learning with Python has been revamped into an example-rich guide to learning state-of-the-art reinforcement learning (RL) and deep RL algorithms with TensorFlow 2 and the OpenAI Gym toolkit.In addition to exploring RL basics and foundational concepts such as Bellman equation, Markov decision processes, and dynamic programming algorithms, this second edition dives deep into the full spectrum of value-based, policy-based, and actor-critic RL methods. It explores state-of-the-art algorithms such as DQN, TRPO, PPO and ACKTR, DDPG, TD3, and SAC in depth, demystifying the underlying math and demonstrating implementations through simple code examples.The book has several new chapters dedicated to new RL techniques, including distributional RL, imitation learning, inverse RL, and meta RL. You will learn to leverage stable baselines, an improvement of OpenAI’s baseline library, to effortlessly implement popular RL algorithms. The book concludes with an overview of promising approaches such as meta-learning and imagination augmented agents in research.By the end, you will become skilled in effectively employing RL and deep RL in your real-world projects.

AWS for Solutions Architects. The definitive guide to AWS Solutions Architecture for migrating to, building, scaling, and succeeding in the cloud - Second Edition

Saurabh Shrivastava, Neelanjali Srivastav, Dr. Siddhartha Choubey, Ph.D, ...

The second edition of AWS for Solutions Architects provides a practical guide to designing cloud solutions that align with industry best practices. This updated edition covers the AWS Well-Architected Framework, core design principles, and cloud-native patterns to help you build secure, high-performance, and cost-effective architectures.Gain a deep understanding of AWS networking, hybrid cloud connectivity, and edge deployments. Explore big data processing with EMR, Glue, Kinesis, and MSK, enabling you to extract valuable insights from data efficiently. New chapters introduce CloudOps, machine learning, IoT, and blockchain, equipping you with the knowledge to develop modern cloud solutions.Learn how to optimize AWS storage, implement containerization strategies, and design scalable data lakes. Whether working on simple configurations or complex enterprise architectures, this guide provides the expertise needed to solve real-world cloud challenges and build reliable, high-performing AWS solutions.

Go Programming - From Beginner to Professional. Learn everything you need to build modern software using Go - Second Edition

Samantha Coyle

Go Programming – From Beginner to Professional is a comprehensive guide that takes your proficiency in the Go programming language from novice to expert. Starting with fundamental concepts, this book covers variables, command-line tools, and working with data before delving into advanced concepts, including error handling, interfaces, and generics, harnessing Go’s latest features through hands-on exercises. Along the way, you’ll learn to structure projects using Go modules, manage packages effectively, and master debugging techniques.As you progress, you’ll get to grips with practical application-centric aspects such as command-line programming, file manipulation, and working with SQL databases. Additionally, the book explores web server development, RESTful APIs, and utilizing the Go HTTP client to interact with web applications. Further enhancing your Go skills, you’ll learn concurrent programming, testing methodologies, Go tools, and how to deploy applications in the cloud. Throughout the book, you’ll uncover Go’s hidden gems and gain insights into time manipulation, best practices, and more.By the end of this book, you’ll have worked through practical exercises and activities that’ll equip you with the knowledge and skills needed to excel as a proficient Go developer, primed for success in real-world projects.

Mastering ServiceNow. Unleash the full potential of ServiceNow from foundations to advanced functions, with this hands-on expert guide fully revised for the Helsinki version - Second Edition

Martin Wood

ServiceNow is a SaaS application that provides workflow form-based applications. It is an ideal platform for creating enterprise-level applications giving requesters and fulfillers improved visibility and access to a process. ServiceNow-based applications often replace email by providing a better way to get work done. The book steps through the main aspects of the ServiceNow platform, from the ground up. It starts by exploring the core architecture of ServiceNow, including building the right data structure. To add business logic and control data, and interactivity to user interaction, you will be shown how to code on both server and the client. You will then learn more about the power of tasks, events and notifications. The book will then focus on using web services and other mechanisms to integrate ServiceNow with other systems. Furthermore, you will learn how to secure applications and data, and understand how ServiceNow performs logging and error reporting. You will then be shown how to package your applications and changes, so they can be installed elsewhere and ways to maintain them easily. If you wish to create an alternative simple interface, then explore ways to make ServiceNow beautiful using Service Portal. By the end of the book, you will know the fundamentals of the ServiceNow platform, helping you be a better ServiceNow System Administrator or developer.

Practical Data Analysis. Pandas, MongoDB, Apache Spark, and more - Second Edition

Hector Cuesta, Dr. Sampath Kumar

Beyond buzzwords like Big Data or Data Science, there are a great opportunities to innovate in many businesses using data analysis to get data-driven products. Data analysis involves asking many questions about data in order to discover insights and generate value for a product or a service.This book explains the basic data algorithms without the theoretical jargon, and you’ll get hands-on turning data into insights using machine learning techniques. We will perform data-driven innovation processing for several types of data such as text, Images, social network graphs, documents, and time series, showing you how to implement large data processing with MongoDB and Apache Spark.

The Data Science Workshop. Learn how you can build machine learning models and create your own real-world data science projects - Second Edition

Anthony So, Thomas V. Joseph, Robert Thas John, Andrew Worsley, ...

Where there’s data, there’s insight. With so much data being generated, there is immense scope to extract meaningful information that’ll boost business productivity and profitability. By learning to convert raw data into game-changing insights, you’ll open new career paths and opportunities.The Data Science Workshop begins by introducing different types of projects and showing you how to incorporate machine learning algorithms in them. You’ll learn to select a relevant metric and even assess the performance of your model. To tune the hyperparameters of an algorithm and improve its accuracy, you’ll get hands-on with approaches such as grid search and random search.Next, you’ll learn dimensionality reduction techniques to easily handle many variables at once, before exploring how to use model ensembling techniques and create new features to enhance model performance. In a bid to help you automatically create new features that improve your model, the book demonstrates how to use the automated feature engineering tool. You’ll also understand how to use the orchestration and scheduling workflow to deploy machine learning models in batch.By the end of this book, you’ll have the skills to start working on data science projects confidently. By the end of this book, you’ll have the skills to start working on data science projects confidently.

Salesforce Anti-Patterns. Build resilient Salesforce solutions using expert advice to create robust and efficient programs - Second Edition

Lars Malmqvist

While Salesforce is a powerful platform, it is prone to common pitfalls that can result in suboptimal performance, increased costs, and reduced user satisfaction. Known as anti-patterns, these problems can arise from design flaws, poor implementation choices, or a lack of understanding of best practices.Written by a seasoned Salesforce professional and 33-time certified Salesforce Certified Technical Architect, this revised edition will teach you how to identify and avoid common issues, optimize your Salesforce architecture, and ensure successful implementation. This second edition is updated with a comprehensive exploration of Salesforce, along with the addition of the most common Salesforce anti-patterns, providing in-depth analysis and practical solutions. These key learnings will further refine your skills to help you build more robust, scalable, and efficient Salesforce architectures. The chapters offer an expanded coverage of emerging technology trends such as AI and DevOps, updated examples, and additional case studies to ensure that you have the latest information and insights.By the end of this book, you’ll have gained the confidence and expertise needed to design and implement effective Salesforce solutions.

Feature Management with LaunchDarkly. Discover safe ways to make live changes in your systems and master testing in production

Michael Gillett, John Kodumal

Over the past few years, DevOps has become the de facto approach for designing, building, and delivering software. Feature management is now extending the DevOps methodology to allow applications to change on demand and run experiments to validate the success of new features. If you want to make feature management happen, LaunchDarkly is the tool for you.This book explains how feature management is key to building modern software systems. Starting with the basics of LaunchDarkly and configuring simple feature flags to turn features on and off, you'll learn how simple functionality can be applied in more powerful ways with percentage-based rollouts, experimentation, and switches. You'll see how feature management can change the way teams work and how large projects, including migrations, are planned. Finally, you'll discover various uses of every part of the tool to gain mastery of LaunchDarkly. This includes tips and tricks for experimentation, identifying groups and segments of users, and investigating and debugging issues with specific users and feature flag evaluations.By the end of the book, you'll have gained a comprehensive understanding of LaunchDarkly, along with knowledge of the adoption of trunk-based development workflows and methods, multi-variant testing, and managing infrastructure changes and migrations.

Scratch 2.0 Beginner's Guide. Create digital stories, games, art, and animations through six unique projects

Michael Badger

Xamarin.Forms Projects. Build multiplatform mobile apps and a game from scratch using C# and Visual Studio 2019 - Second Edition

Daniel Hindrikes, Johan Karlsson, David Ortinau

Xamarin.Forms is a lightweight cross-platform development toolkit for building apps with a rich user interface. Improved and updated to cover the latest features of Xamarin.Forms, this second edition covers CollectionView and Shell, along with interesting concepts such as augmented reality (AR) and machine learning.Starting with an introduction to Xamarin and how it works, this book shares tips for choosing the type of development environment you should strive for when planning cross-platform mobile apps. You’ll build your first Xamarin.Forms app and learn how to use Shell to implement the app architecture. The book gradually increases the level of complexity of the projects, guiding you through creating apps ranging from a location tracker and weather map to an AR game and face recognition. As you advance, the book will take you through modern mobile development frameworks such as SQLite, .NET Core Mono, ARKit, and ARCore. You’ll be able to customize your apps for both Android and iOS platforms to achieve native-like performance and speed. The book is filled with engaging examples, so you can grasp essential concepts by writing code instead of reading through endless theory.By the end of this book, you’ll be ready to develop your own native apps with Xamarin.Forms and its associated technologies, such as .NET Core, Visual Studio 2019, and C#.

Data Analysis with R. A comprehensive guide to manipulating, analyzing, and visualizing data in R - Second Edition

Tony Fischetti

Frequently the tool of choice for academics, R has spread deep into the private sector and can be found in the production pipelines at some of the most advanced and successful enterprises. The power and domain-specificity of R allows the user to express complex analytics easily, quickly, and succinctly. Starting with the basics of R and statistical reasoning, this book dives into advanced predictive analytics, showing how to apply those techniques to real-world data though with real-world examples.Packed with engaging problems and exercises, this book begins with a review of R and its syntax with packages like Rcpp, ggplot2, and dplyr. From there, get to grips with the fundamentals of applied statistics and build on this knowledge to perform sophisticated and powerful analytics. Solve the difficulties relating to performing data analysis in practice and find solutions to working with messy data, large data, communicating results, and facilitating reproducibility.This book is engineered to be an invaluable resource through many stages of anyone’s career as a data analyst.

Haskell High Performance Programming. Write Haskell programs that are robust and fast enough to stand up to the needs of today

Samuli Thomasson

Haskell, with its power to optimize the code and its high performance, is a natural candidate for high performance programming. It is especially well suited to stacking abstractions high with a relatively low performance cost. This book addresses the challenges of writing efficient code with lazy evaluation and techniques often used to optimize the performance of Haskell programs. We open with an in-depth look at the evaluation of Haskell expressions and discuss optimization and benchmarking. You will learn to use parallelism and we'll explore the concept of streaming. We’ll demonstrate the benefits of running multithreaded and concurrent applications. Next we’ll guide you through various profiling tools that will help you identify performance issues in your program. We’ll end our journey by looking at GPGPU, Cloud and Functional Reactive Programming in Haskell. At the very end there is a catalogue of robust library recommendations with code samples.By the end of the book, you will be able to boost the performance of any app and prepare it to stand up to real-world punishment.

Twilio Cookbook. Over 70 easy-to-follow recipes, from exploring the key features of Twilio to building advanced telephony apps

Roger Stringer

Microsoft Dynamics NAV. Implementing ERP Systems

Alex Chow, Vjekoslav Babić, Laura Nicolas Lorente, David Studebaker, ...

Microsoft Dynamics NAV is an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) application used in all kinds of organizations around the world. It provides a great variety of functionality, out-of-the-box, in different topics such as accounting, sales, purchase processing, logistics, and manufacturing. Microsoft Dynamics NAV also allows companies to grow their applications by customizing solutions to meet specific requirements.This course is a hands-on tutorial on working with a real Dynamics NAV implementation. It begins by providing an insight into the different tools available to migrate data from client legacy systems into Microsoft Dynamics NAV. If you are already live with Microsoft Dynamics NAV, you will learn about upgrades and what to expect from them. We’ll also show you how to implement additional or expanding functionalities within your existing Microsoft Dynamics NAV installation, perform data analysis, debug error messages, and implement free third-party add-ons to your existing installation. From here, you will be introduced to integrated development tools to make you a highly productive developer in the NAV environment.The course will serve as a comprehensive reference guide, complementing NAV's Help files. You will find this course really useful if you want to evaluate Microsoft Dynamics NAV's development capabilities or need to manage NAV-based projects. Additionally, you will also learn about the NAV application structure, the C/SIDE development environment, the C/AL language, the construction and uses of each object type, and how it all fits together. Moving on, you will be guided through the NAV way of solving problems. You will be introduced to patterns and the software NAV architecture and will then build an example application. Then, you will walk through the details of architectural patterns, design patterns, and implementation patterns and will also learn about anti-patterns and handling legacy code. You will learn how to build solutions using patterns. The course offers premium, highly practical content on this recently released version of Dynamics NAV, and includes material from the following Packt books : 1. Implementing Microsoft Dynamics NAV - Third Edition 2. Programming Microsoft Dynamics™ NAV 3. Learning Dynamics NAV Patterns

Microsoft Silverlight 4 Data and Services Cookbook. Over 80 practical recipes for creating rich, data-driven business applications in Silverlight

Kevin Dockx, Gill Cleeren

Microsoft Silverlight is a programmable web browser plugin that enables features including animation, vector graphics, and audio-video playback – features that characterize Rich Internet Applications. However, Silverlight is a great (and growing) Line-Of-Business platform and is increasingly being used to build data-driven business applications. Silverlight Data Services enable efficient access to your data, allowing you to draw on multiple sources of data and solve particular data problems. There is very little existing material that demonstrates how to build data-driven solutions with the platform. Silverlight 3 made a big step into Line-Of-Business data services and Silverlight 4 builds further upon this. This book will enable .NET developers to get their finger on the pulse of data-driven business applications in Silverlight.This book is not a general Silverlight 3/4 overview book; it is uniquely aimed at developers who want to build data-driven applications. It focuses on showing .NET developers how to interact with, and handle multiple sources of data in Silverlight business applications, and how to solve particular data problems following a practical hands-on approach, using real-world recipes. It is a practical cookbook that teaches you how to build data-rich business applications with Silverlight that draw on multiple sources of data. Most of the covered features work both in Silverlight 3 and 4. However, we cover some that are specific for Silverlight 4, which will therefore not work with Silverlight 3. Where this is the case, it is clearly indicated.Packed with reusable, real-world recipes, the book begins by introducing you to general principles when programming Silverlight. It then dives deep into the world of data services, covering all the options available to access data and communicate with services to get the most out of data in your Silverlight business applications, whilst at the same time providing a rich user experience. Chapters cover data binding, data controls, the concepts of talking to services, communicating with WCF, ASMX and REST services, and much more.By following the practical recipes in this book, which are of varying difficulty levels, you will learn the concepts needed to create data-rich business applications—from the creation of a Silverlight application, to displaying data in the Silverlight application and upgrading your existing applications to use Silverlight. Each recipe covers a data services topic, going from the description of the problem, through a conceptual solution to a solution containing sample code.

Unity Game Development Scripting. Write efficient C# scripts to create modular key game elements that are usable for any kind of Unity project

Kyle D'Aoust

Python Scripting in Blender. Extend the power of Blender using Python to create objects, animations, and effective add-ons

Paolo Acampora

Blender, a powerful open source 3D software, can be extended and powered up using the Python programming language. This book teaches you how to automate laborious operations using scripts, and expand the set of available commands, graphic interfaces, tools, and event responses, which will enable you to add custom features to meet your needs and bring your creative ideas to life.The book begins by covering essential Python concepts and showing you how to create a basic add-on. You’ll then gain a solid understanding of the entities that affect the look of Blender’s objects such as modifiers, constraints, and materials. As you advance, you’ll get to grips with the animation system in Blender and learn how to set up its behavior using Python. The examples, tools, patterns, and best practices present throughout the book will familiarize you with the Python API and build your knowledge base, along with enabling you to produce valuable code that empowers the users and is ready for publishing or production.By the end of this book, you’ll be able to successfully design add-ons that integrate seamlessly with the software and its ecosystem.

Apache OfBiz Cookbook. Over 60 simple but incredibly effective recipes for taking control of OFBiz

Ruth Hoffman, Brian Fitzpatrick

Apache Open For Business (OFBiz) is an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system that provides a common data model and an extensive set of business processes. But without proper guidance on developing performance-critical applications, it is easy to make the wrong design and technology decisions. The power and promise of Apache OFBiz is comprehensively revealed in a collection of self-contained, quick, practical recipes in this Cookbook.This book covers a range of topics from initial system setup to web application and HTML page creation, Java development, and data maintenance tasks. Focusing on a series of the most commonly performed OFBiz tasks, it provides clear, cogent, and easy-to-follow instructions designed to make the most of your OFBiz experience.Let this book be your guide to enhancing your OFBiz productivity by saving you valuable time. Written specifically to give clear and straightforward answers to the most commonly asked OFBiz questions, this compendium of OFBiz recipes will show you everything you need to know to get things done in OFBiz.Whether you are new to OFBiz or an old pro, you are sure to find many useful hints and handy tips here. Topics range from getting started to configuration and system setup, security and database management through the final stages of developing and testing new OFBiz applications.

The Insider's Guide to Arm Cortex-M Development. Leverage embedded software development tools and examples to become an efficient Cortex-M developer

Zachary Lasiuk, Pareena Verma, Jason Andrews

Cortex-M has been around since 2004, so why a new book now? With new microcontrollers based on the Cortex-M55 and Cortex-M85 being introduced this year, Cortex-M continues to expand. New software concepts, such as standardized software reuse, have emerged alongside new topics including security and machine learning. Development methodologies have also significantly advanced, with more embedded development taking place in the cloud and increased levels of automation. Due to these advances, a single engineer can no longer understand an entire project and requires new skills to be successful.This book provides a unique view of how to navigate and apply the latest concepts in microcontroller development. The book is split into two parts. First, you’ll be guided through how to select the ideal set of hardware, software, and tools for your specific project. Next, you’ll explore how to implement essential topics for modern embedded developers. Throughout the book, there are examples for you to learn by working with real Cortex-M devices with all software available on GitHub. You will gain experience with the small Cortex-M0+, the powerful Cortex-M55, and more Cortex-M processors.By the end of this book, you’ll be able to practically apply modern Cortex-M software development concepts.

iOS and OS X Network Programming Cookbook. If you want to develop network applications for iOS and OS X, this is one of the few books written specifically for those systems. With over 50 recipes and in-depth explanations, it’s an essential guide

Jon Hoffman

Systems Programming with C# and .NET. Building robust system solutions with C# 12 and .NET 8

Dennis Vroegop

If you want to explore the vast potential of C# and .NET to build high-performance applications, then this book is for you. Written by a 17-time awardee of the Microsoft MVP award, this book delves into low-level programming with C# and .NET. The book starts by introducing fundamental concepts such as low-level APIs, memory management, and performance optimization. Each chapter imparts practical skills, guiding you through threads, file I/O, and network protocols. With a focus on real-world applications, you’ll learn how to secure systems, implement effective logging, and deploy applications seamlessly. The book particularly emphasizes debugging, profiling, and addressing challenges unique to multithreaded and asynchronous code. You’ll also gain insights into cybersecurity essentials to help you safeguard data and establish secure communications. Moreover, a dedicated chapter on systems programming in Linux will help you broaden your horizons and explore cross-platform development. For those venturing into embedded systems, the final chapter offers hands-on guidance.By the end of this book, you’ll be ready to deploy, distribute, and maintain applications in production systems.

Learning Android Google Maps. Integrate Google Maps with your Android application to offer feature-rich and interactive maps

Raj Amal, Raj A W

This book helps you to overcome the most common problems faced by users and helps you create a successful map application without any hassle.The book starts with a brief description of how to set up an environment and obtain an API key to create your map application. This book will teach you about adding markers, overlays, and information windows to the map in detail. You will then dive deep into customizing various types of maps and working with location data and Google Street view.By the end of this book, you will be able to create succinct map applications in Android using Google maps efficiently.

The DevOps Career Handbook. The ultimate guide to pursuing a successful career in DevOps

John Knight, Nate Swenson

DevOps is a set of practices that make up a culture, and practicing DevOps methods can make developers more productive and easier to work with. The DevOps Career Handbook is filled with hundreds of tips and tricks from experts regarding every step of the interview process, helping you save time and money by steering clear of avoidable mistakes.You’ll learn about the various career paths available in the field of DevOps, before acquiring the essential skills needed to begin working as a DevOps professional. If you are already a DevOps engineer, this book will help you to gain advanced skills to become a DevOps specialist. After getting to grips with the basics, you'll discover tips and tricks for preparing your resume and online profiles and find out how to build long-lasting relationships with the recruiters. Finally, you'll read through interviews which will give you an insight into a career in DevOps from the viewpoint of individuals at different career levels.By the end of this DevOps book, you’ll gain a solid understanding of what DevOps is, the various DevOps career paths, and how to prepare for your interview.