Publisher: Packt Publishing
Founded in 2004 in Birmingham, UK, Packt's mission is to help the world put software to work in new ways, through the delivery of effective learning and information services to IT professionals. Working towards that vision, we have published over 6,500 books and videos so far, providing IT professionals with the actionable knowledge they need to get the job done - whether that's specific learning on an emerging technology or optimizing key skills in more established tools. As part of our mission, we have also awarded over $1,000,000 through our Open Source Project Royalty scheme, helping numerous projects become household names along the way.
489
Ebook

Virtual Reality Blueprints. Create compelling VR experiences for mobile and desktop

Charles Palmer, John Williamson

Are you new to virtual reality? Do you want to create exciting interactive VR applications? There's no need to be daunted by the thought of creating interactive VR applications, it's much easier than you think with this hands-on, project-based guide that will take you through VR development essentials for desktop and mobile-based games and applications. Explore the three top platforms—Cardboard VR, Gear VR, and OculusVR —to design immersive experiences from scratch.You’ll start by understanding the science-fiction roots of virtual reality and then build your first VR experience using Cardboard VR. You'll then delve into user interactions in virtual space for the Google Cardboard then move on to creating a virtual gallery with Gear VR. Then you will learn all about virtual movements, state machines, and spawning while you shoot zombies in the Oculus Rift headset. Next, you'll construct a Carnival Midway, complete with two common games to entertain players.Along the way, you will explore the best practices for VR development, review game design tips, discuss methods for combating motion sickness and identify alternate uses for VR applications

490
Ebook

Python Data Science Essentials. A practitioner’s guide covering essential data science principles, tools, and techniques - Third Edition

Alberto Boschetti, Luca Massaron

Fully expanded and upgraded, the latest edition of Python Data Science Essentials will help you succeed in data science operations using the most common Python libraries. This book offers up-to-date insight into the core of Python, including the latest versions of the Jupyter Notebook, NumPy, pandas, and scikit-learn.The book covers detailed examples and large hybrid datasets to help you grasp essential statistical techniques for data collection, data munging and analysis, visualization, and reporting activities. You will also gain an understanding of advanced data science topics such as machine learning algorithms, distributed computing, tuning predictive models, and natural language processing. Furthermore, You’ll also be introduced to deep learning and gradient boosting solutions such as XGBoost, LightGBM, and CatBoost.By the end of the book, you will have gained a complete overview of the principal machine learning algorithms, graph analysis techniques, and all the visualization and deployment instruments that make it easier to present your results to an audience of both data science experts and business users

491
Ebook

Jira Software Essentials. Plan, track, and release great applications with Jira Software - Second Edition

Patrick Li

Jira Software is an agile project management tool that supports any agile methodology, be it scrum, Kanban, or your own unique flavour. From agile boards to reports, you can plan, track, and manage all your agile software development projects from a single tool. Jira Software brings the power of agile methodology to Atlassian Jira.This second edition of JIRA Agile Essentials, will help you dive straight into the action, exploring critical agile terminologies and concepts in the context of Jira Software. You will learn how to plan, track, and release great software. This book will teach you how to install and run Jira Software and set it up to run with Scrum and Kanban. It will also teach you to use Jira Software your way and run projects beyond the out-of-box Scrum and Kanban way, including a hybrid approach of both the methodologies and other options that come with Jira Software. Later, you will learn how to integrate it with the tools you are already using and enhance Jira with add-ons such as Confluence. You will learn to stay connected with your team from anywhere to ensure great development. Jira Software has numerous deployment options in the cloud, on your own infrastructure, or at a massive scale. You will be introduced to Bitbucket, Atlassian’s distributed version control system, which integrates seamlessly with Jira, allowing your team to work within the two applications as one harmonious environment.With this practical guide, you will develop a great working knowledge of Jira Software and your project management will become much more efficient.

492
Ebook

Hands-On Robotics Programming with C++. Leverage Raspberry Pi 3 and C++ libraries to build intelligent robotics applications

Dinesh Tavasalkar

C++ is one of the most popular legacy programming languages for robotics, and a combination of C++ and robotics hardware is used in many leading industries. This book will bridge the gap between Raspberry Pi and C/C++ programming and enable you to develop applications for Raspberry Pi. You'll even be able to implement C programs in Raspberry Pi with the WiringPi library.The book will guide you through developing a fully functional car robot and writing programs to move it in different directions. You’ll then create an obstacle-avoiding robot using an ultrasonic sensor. In addition to this, you’ll find out how to control the robot wirelessly using your PC or Mac. This book will also help you work with object detection and tracking using OpenCV, and guide you through exploring face detection techniques. Finally, you will create an Android app and control the robot wirelessly with an Android smartphone.By the end of this book, you will have gained experience in developing a robot using Raspberry Pi and C/C++ programming.

493
Ebook

Mastering Python Scripting for System Administrators. Write scripts and automate them for real-world administration tasks using Python

Ganesh Sanjiv Naik

Python has evolved over time and extended its features in relation to every possible IT operation. Python is simple to learn, yet has powerful libraries that can be used to build powerful Python scripts for solving real-world problems and automating administrators' routine activities. The objective of this book is to walk through a series of projects that will teach readers Python scripting with each project.This book will initially cover Python installation and quickly revise basic to advanced programming fundamentals. The book will then focus on the development process as a whole, from setup to planning to building different tools. It will include IT administrators' routine activities (text processing, regular expressions, file archiving, and encryption), network administration (socket programming, email handling, the remote controlling of devices using telnet/ssh, and protocols such as SNMP/DHCP), building graphical user interface, working with websites (Apache log file processing, SOAP and REST APIs communication, and web scraping), and database administration (MySQL and similar database data administration, data analytics, and reporting).By the end of this book, you will be able to use the latest features of Python and be able to build powerful tools that will solve challenging, real-world tasks

494
Ebook

Xamarin.Forms Projects. Build seven real-world cross-platform mobile apps with C# and Xamarin.Forms

Johan Karlsson, Daniel Hindrikes

Xamarin.Forms is a lightweight cross-platform development toolkit for building applications with a rich user interface.In this book you'll start by building projects that explain the Xamarin.Forms ecosystem to get up and running with building cross-platform applications. We'll increase in difficulty throughout the projects, making you learn the nitty-gritty of Xamarin.Forms offerings. You'll gain insights into the architecture, how to arrange your app's design, where to begin developing, what pitfalls exist, and how to avoid them. The book contains seven real-world projects, to get you hands-on with building rich UIs and providing a truly cross-platform experience. It will also guide you on how to set up a machine for Xamarin app development. You'll build a simple to-do application that gets you going, then dive deep into building advanced apps such as messaging platform, games, and machine learning, to build a UI for an augmented reality project.By the end of the book, you'll be confident in building cross-platforms and fitting Xamarin.Forms toolkits in your app development. You'll be able to take the practice you get from this book to build applications that comply with your requirements.

495
Ebook

Mastering Non-Functional Requirements. Templates and tactics for analysis, architecture and assessment

Sameer Paradkar

Non-functional Requirements are key to any software/IT program and cannot beoverlooked or ignored. This book provides a comprehensive approach to the analysis,architecture, and measurement of NFRs. It includes considerations for bespoke Java, .NET, and COTS applications that are applicable to IT applications/systems indifferent domains.The book outlines the methodology for capturing the NFRs and also describes aframework that can be leveraged by analysts and architects for tackling NFRs for variousengagements.This book starts off by explaining the various KPIs, taxonomies, and methods foridentifying NFRs. Learn the design guidelines for architecting applications and systemsrelating to NFRs and design principles to achieve the desired outcome. We will then move on to various key tiers/layers and patterns pertaining to the business, database, and integrating tiers. After this, we will dive deep into the topics pertaining to techniques related to monitoring and measurement of NFRs, such as sizing, analytical modeling, and quality assurance. Lastly, we end the book by describing some pivotal NFRs and checklists for the softwarequality attributes related to the business, application, data, and infrastructuredomains.

496
Ebook

Data Science Algorithms in a Week. Top 7 algorithms for scientific computing, data analysis, and machine learning - Second Edition

David Natingga

Machine learning applications are highly automated and self-modifying, and continue to improve over time with minimal human intervention, as they learn from the trained data. To address the complex nature of various real-world data problems, specialized machine learning algorithms have been developed. Through algorithmic and statistical analysis, these models can be leveraged to gain new knowledge from existing data as well.Data Science Algorithms in a Week addresses all problems related to accurate and efficient data classification and prediction. Over the course of seven days, you will be introduced to seven algorithms, along with exercises that will help you understand different aspects of machine learning. You will see how to pre-cluster your data to optimize and classify it for large datasets. This book also guides you in predicting data based on existing trends in your dataset. This book covers algorithms such as k-nearest neighbors, Naive Bayes, decision trees, random forest, k-means, regression, and time-series analysis.By the end of this book, you will understand how to choose machine learning algorithms for clustering, classification, and regression and know which is best suited for your problem