Refactoring with C#. Safely improve .NET applications and pay down technical debt with Visual Studio, .NET 8, and C# 12

Matt Eland, Steve Smith

Software projects start as brand-new greenfield projects, but invariably become muddied in technical debt far sooner than you’d expect. In Refactoring with C#, you'll explore what technical debt is and how it arises before walking through the process of safely refactoring C# code using modern tooling in Visual Studio and more recent C# language features using C# 12 and .NET 8. This book, written by a Microsoft MVP, will guide you through the process of refactoring safely through advanced unit testing with XUnit and libraries like Moq, Snapper, and Scientist .NET. You'll explore maintainable code through SOLID principles and defensive coding techniques made possible in newer versions of C#. You'll also find out how to run code analysis and write custom Roslyn analyzers to detect and resolve issues unique to your code.The nature of coding is changing, and you'll explore how to use AI with the GitHub Copilot Chat to refactor, test, document, and generate code before ending with a discussion about communicating technical debt to leadership and getting organizational buy-in to refactor your code in enterprise organizations and in agile teams.By the end of this book, you'll understand the nature of refactoring and see how you can safely, effectively, and repeatably pay down the technical debt in your application while adding value to your business.

Unity 2022 Mobile Game Development. Build and publish engaging games for Android and iOS - Third Edition

John P. Doran

Unity is a well-established player in the mobile game development sphere, and its new release, Unity 2022, is packed with new, exciting features. In Unity 2022 Mobile Game Development, the third edition in this popular series, you'll get to grips with the Unity game engine by building a mobile game and publishing it on the most popular mobile app stores as well as exploring the all-new features.This book provides a comprehensive and practical approach to mobile game development, helping you build an endless runner game. Starting with setting up a simple Unity project for mobile development, you’ll delve into various essential aspects needed to successfully create and publish your game. You’ll acquire a range of skills, such as incorporating touch gestures, monetizing your game with Unity Ads and in-app purchases, designing an intuitive UI, and seamlessly integrating social media functionalities. Additionally, you’ll gain valuable insights into player preferences and behavior using Unity's analytics tools. You’ll also explore features of augmented reality in Unity 2022, enhancing your game's appeal.By the end of this book, you’ll be well-equipped to reap the power of Unity 2022 to build, optimize, and publish robust cross-platform mobile games with C#, as well as widening your skill set and enhancing your credentials as a game developer.

Design Better and Build Your Brand in Canva. A beginner’s guide to producing professional branding, marketing, and social content for businesses

Laura Goodsell, Janine Friston, Heather Palfreyman

If you're constantly frustrated by how long it takes to create a design in Canva, then you've come to the right place. This book will get you up and running quickly with creating professional branded graphics in Canva.You’ll learn how to set up a Canva account, both free and pro and create a brand kit while understanding the importance of branding. Next, you’ll discover all the features and tools as well as how to put everything together to build a brand you love and graphics that work for your business. As you progress, the chapters will show you how to organize your account, create presentations, use videos and animation within your marketing materials and more.By the end of this book, you’ll have a solid understanding of what Canva is and what it does and be able to confidently and easily create a branded design from scratch.

Antivirus Bypass Techniques. Learn practical techniques and tactics to combat, bypass, and evade antivirus software

Nir Yehoshua, Uriel Kosayev

Antivirus software is built to detect, prevent, and remove malware from systems, but this does not guarantee the security of your antivirus solution as certain changes can trick the antivirus and pose a risk for users. This book will help you to gain a basic understanding of antivirus software and take you through a series of antivirus bypass techniques that will enable you to bypass antivirus solutions.The book starts by introducing you to the cybersecurity landscape, focusing on cyber threats, malware, and more. You will learn how to collect leads to research antivirus and explore the two common bypass approaches used by the authors. Once you’ve covered the essentials of antivirus research and bypassing, you'll get hands-on with bypassing antivirus software using obfuscation, encryption, packing, PowerShell, and more. Toward the end, the book covers security improvement recommendations, useful for both antivirus vendors as well as for developers to help strengthen the security and malware detection capabilities of antivirus software.By the end of this security book, you'll have a better understanding of antivirus software and be able to confidently bypass antivirus software.

Web Development with Django. Learn to build modern web applications with a Python-based framework

Ben Shaw, Saurabh Badhwar, Andrew Bird, Bharath Chandra K S, ...

Do you want to develop reliable and secure applications which stand out from the crowd, rather than spending hours on boilerplate code? Then the Django framework is where you should begin. Often referred to as a 'batteries included' web development framework, Django comes with all the core features needed to build a standalone application.Web Development with Django takes this philosophy and equips you with the knowledge and confidence to build real-world applications using Python.Starting with the essential concepts of Django, you'll cover its major features by building a website called Bookr – a repository for book reviews. This end-to-end case study is split into a series of bitesize projects that are presented as exercises and activities, allowing you to challenge yourself in an enjoyable and attainable way.As you progress, you'll learn various practical skills, including how to serve static files to add CSS, JavaScript, and images to your application, how to implement forms to accept user input, and how to manage sessions to ensure a reliable user experience. Throughout this book, you'll cover key daily tasks that are part of the development cycle of a real-world web application.By the end of this book, you'll have the skills and confidence to creatively tackle your own ambitious projects with Django.

Learning Elastic Stack 7.0. Distributed search, analytics, and visualization using Elasticsearch, Logstash, Beats, and Kibana - Second Edition

Pranav Shukla, Sharath Kumar M N

The Elastic Stack is a powerful combination of tools that help in performing distributed search, analytics, logging, and visualization of data. Elastic Stack 7.0 encompasses new features and capabilities that will enable you to find unique insights into analytics using these techniques. This book will give you a fundamental understanding of what the stack is all about, and guide you in using it efficiently to build powerful real-time data processing applications. The first few sections of the book will help you understand how to set up the stack by installing tools and exploring their basic configurations. You’ll then get up to speed with using Elasticsearch for distributed search and analytics, Logstash for logging, and Kibana for data visualization. As you work through the book, you will discover the technique of creating custom plugins using Kibana and Beats. This is followed by coverage of the Elastic X-Pack, a useful extension for effective security and monitoring. You’ll also find helpful tips on how to use Elastic Cloud and deploy Elastic Stack in production environments. By the end of this book, you’ll be well-versed with fundamental Elastic Stack functionalities and the role of each component in the stack to solve different data processing problems.

Mastering Reinforcement Learning with Python. Build next-generation, self-learning models using reinforcement learning techniques and best practices

Enes Bilgin

Reinforcement learning (RL) is a field of artificial intelligence (AI) used for creating self-learning autonomous agents. Building on a strong theoretical foundation, this book takes a practical approach and uses examples inspired by real-world industry problems to teach you about state-of-the-art RL.Starting with bandit problems, Markov decision processes, and dynamic programming, the book provides an in-depth review of the classical RL techniques, such as Monte Carlo methods and temporal-difference learning. After that, you will learn about deep Q-learning, policy gradient algorithms, actor-critic methods, model-based methods, and multi-agent reinforcement learning. Then, you'll be introduced to some of the key approaches behind the most successful RL implementations, such as domain randomization and curiosity-driven learning.As you advance, you’ll explore many novel algorithms with advanced implementations using modern Python libraries such as TensorFlow and Ray’s RLlib package. You’ll also find out how to implement RL in areas such as robotics, supply chain management, marketing, finance, smart cities, and cybersecurity while assessing the trade-offs between different approaches and avoiding common pitfalls.By the end of this book, you’ll have mastered how to train and deploy your own RL agents for solving RL problems.

PowerShell Troubleshooting Guide. Minimize debugging time and maximize troubleshooting efficiency by leveraging the unique features of the PowerShell language

Mike Shepard