Master over 80 object-oriented recipes to create amazing GUIs in Python and revolutionize your applications today About This Book ? Use object-oriented programming to develop amazing GUIs in Python ? Create a working GUI project as a central resource for developing your Python GUIs ? Easy-to-follow recipes to help you develop code using the latest released version of Python Who This Book Is For This book is for intermediate Python programmers who wish to enhance their Python skills by writing powerful GUIs in Python. As Python is such a great and easy to learn language, this book is also ideal for any developer with experience of other languages and enthusiasm to expand their horizon. What You Will Learn ? Create the GUI Form and add widgets ? Arrange the widgets using layout managers ? Use object-oriented programming to create GUIs ? Create Matplotlib charts ? Use threads and talking to networks ? Talk to a MySQL database via the GUI ? Perform unit-testing and internationalizing the GUI ? Extend the GUI with third-party graphical libraries ? Get to know the best practices to create GUIs In Detail Python is a multi-domain, interpreted programming language. It is a widely used general-purpose, high-level programming language. It is often used as a *ing language because of its forgiving syntax and compatibility with a wide variety of different eco-systems. Python GUI Programming Cookbook follows a task-based approach to help you create beautiful and very effective GUIs with the least amount of code necessary. This book will guide you through the very basics of creating a fully functional GUI in Python with only a few lines of code. Each and every recipe adds more widgets to the GUIs we are creating. While the cookbook recipes all stand on their own, there is a common theme running through all of them. As our GUIs keep expanding, using more and more widgets, we start to talk to networks, databases, and graphical libraries that greatly enhance our GUI’s functionality. This book is what you need to expand your knowledge on the subject of GUIs, and make sure you’re not missing out in the long run. Style and approach This programming cookbook consists of standalone recipes, and this approach makes it unique.. While each recipe explains a certain concept, throughout the book you’ll build a more and more advanced GUI, recipe after recipe. In some of the advanced topics, we simply create a new GUI in order to explore these topics in depth.

A practical guide to building programmable networks using OpenDaylight About This Book ? Learn and understand how SDN controllers operate and integrate with networks; this book's step-by-step tutorials will give you a strong foundation in SDN, NVF, and OpenDayLight. ? Learn how to map legacy Layer 2/3 networking technologies in the SDN world ? Add new services and capabilities to your infrastructure and quickly adopt SDN and NFV within your organization with OpenDayLight. ? Integrate and manage software-defined networks efficiently in your organization. ? Build innovative network applications with OpenDayLight and save time and resources. Who This Book Is For This book targets network engineers, network programmers and developers, administrators, and anyone with some level of networking experience who'd like to deploy OpenDayLight effectively. Familiarity with the day-to-day operations of computer networks is expected What You Will Learn ? Transition from legacy networking to software-defined networking ? Learn how SDN controllers work and manage a network using southbound and northbound APIs ? Learn how to deploy the OpenDayLight SDN controller and integrate it with virtual switches ? Understand the basic design and operation of the OpenDaylight platform ? Build simple MD-SAL OpenDaylight applications ? Build applications on top of OpenDayLight to trigger network changes based on different events ? Integrate OpenStack with OpenDayLight to build a fully managed network ? Learn how to build a software-defined datacenter using NFV and service-chaining technologies In Detail OpenDaylight is an open source, software-defined network controller based on standard protocols. It aims to accelerate the adoption of Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and create a solid foundation for Network Functions Virtualization (NFV). SDN is a vast subject; many network engineers find it difficult to get started with using and operating different SDN platforms. This book will give you a practical bridge from SDN theory to the practical, real-world use of SDN in datacenters and by cloud providers. The book will help you understand the features and use cases for SDN, NFV, and OpenDaylight. NFV uses virtualization concepts and techniques to create virtual classes for node functions. Used together, SDN and NFV can elevate the standards of your network architecture; generic hardware-saving costs and the advanced and abstracted software will give you the freedom to evolve your network in the future without having to invest more in costly equipment. By the end of this book, you will have learned how to design and deploy OpenDaylight networks and integrate them with physical network switches. You will also have mastered basic network programming over the SDN fabric. Style and approach This is a step-by-step tutorial aimed at getting you up-to-speed with OpenDayLight and ready to adopt it for your SDN (Software-Defined Networking) and NFV (Network Functions Virtualization) ecosystem.

香港中文大歷史系成立於1963年，至2013年已經歷了五十年。在這五十年的歲月中，歷史系的前賢和師輩奠下了嚴肅的學術風氣與扎實的研究根基。莘莘學子，遂得以承傳錢穆、牟潤孫、全漢昇、嚴耕望、王德昭、孫國棟等眾多史學名宿的治學精神。 為了慶祝歷史系踏入金禧之年，我們邀請校友撰文論述前輩老師的個人風骨、學術成就、治史理念、研究心得及教學旨趣等，編成此書以總結五十年來歷史系前賢的開創、耕耘之功及治史業績，好讓後輩繼往開來，延續並發展創系以來的理念和精神。

全書包含幾個英語語法範疇：易混淆詞、單複數、量詞、數目詞彙、同音異義詞、短語動詞、慣用語、明喻和隱喻等 內容選自余黎青萍於報章撰寫的專欄文章，談及英語學習不同的重要範疇，作者從日常生活、工作、傳媒報導等搜集實例，從反方面指出措辭不當、似是而非的毛病，也從正面說明如何學好英語，如何活用 phrasal verbs 及 idioms，幫助讀者明白英語如何可表達得傳神。

本書從鍛鍊體魄的好處開始，仔細講解跑步前的風險評估，按個人體能和目標設計的多種長跑訓練計劃和訓練方法，如長距離跑、節奏跑及間歇跑的要點，還詳述如何預防受傷、處理傷患、配合飲食營養，加強鍛鍊效果。

「極短篇」，又有人稱之為「小小說」或「掌上小說」。寫「極短篇」，極不容易，在如此小的篇幅內說故事，從頭到尾，一眼望盡，瑕瑜立見，無可隱藏，其實「難度」相當高。 但本書作者卻是寫「極短篇」的高手，書中精選了她的三十篇佳作，當中的故事，既有愛情的，也有人情的，甚至奇幻的，題材豐富，異彩紛呈，情節引人入勝，結局又出人意表。每個故事讀後，相信讀者或會會心微笑，或會擊節驚歎，又或會領悟到一點點人生的道理。

Implement classic and functional data structures and algorithms using Python About This Book ? A step by step guide, which will provide you with a thorough discussion on the analysis and design of fundamental Python data structures. ? Get a better understanding of advanced Python concepts such as big-o notation, dynamic programming, and functional data structures. ? Explore illustrations to present data structures and algorithms, as well as their analysis, in a clear, visual manner. Who This Book Is For The book will appeal to Python developers. A basic knowledge of Python is expected. What You Will Learn ? Gain a solid understanding of Python data structures. ? Build sophisticated data applications. ? Understand the common programming patterns and algorithms used in Python data science. ? Write efficient robust code. In Detail Data structures allow you to organize data in a particular way efficiently. They are critical to any problem, provide a complete solution, and act like reusable code. In this book, you will learn the essential Python data structures and the most common algorithms. With this easy-to-read book, you will be able to understand the power of linked lists, double linked lists, and circular linked lists. You will be able to create complex data structures such as graphs, stacks and queues. We will explore the application of binary searches and binary search trees. You will learn the common techniques and structures used in tasks such as preprocessing, modeling, and transforming data. We will also discuss how to organize your code in a manageable, consistent, and extendable way. The book will explore in detail sorting algorithms such as bubble sort, selection sort, insertion sort, and merge sort. By the end of the book, you will learn how to build components that are easy to understand, debug, and use in different applications. Style and approach The easy-to-read book with its fast-paced nature will improve the productivity of Python programmers and improve the performance of Python applications.

Deep dive into the unified, distributed storage system in order to provide excellent performance About This Book ? Leverage Ceph's advanced features such as erasure coding, tiering, and Bluestore ? Solve large-scale problems with Ceph as a tool by understanding its strengths and weaknesses to develop the best solutions ? A practical guide that covers engaging use cases to help you use advanced features of Ceph effectively Who This Book Is For If you are a developer and an administrator who has deployed a Ceph cluster before and are curious about some of the most advanced features in order to improve performance then this book is for you What You Will Learn ?Know when and how to use some of Ceph's advanced new features ? Set up a test cluster with Ansible and some virtual machines using VirtualBox and Vagrant ?Develop novel solutions to massive problems with librados and shared object classes. ? Choose intelligent parameters for an erasure coded pool and set it up. ? Configure the Bluestore settings and see how they interact with different hardware configurations. ? Keep Ceph running through thick and thin with tuning, monitoring and disaster recovery advice. In Detail Mastering Ceph covers all that you need to know to use Ceph effectively. Starting with design goals and planning steps that should be undertaken to ensure successful deployments, you will be guided through to setting up and deploying the Ceph cluster, with the help of orchestration tools. Key areas of Ceph including Bluestore, Erasure coding and cache tiering will be covered with help of examples. Development of applications which use Librados and Distributed computations with shared object classes are also covered. A section on tuning will take you through the process of optimisizing both Ceph and its supporting infrastructure. Finally, you will learn to troubleshoot issues and handle various scenarios where Ceph is likely not to recover on its own. By the end of the book, you will be able to successfully deploy and operate a resilient high performance Ceph cluster. Style and approach A practical guide which has each chapter explaining the concept, sharing tips and tricks and a use case to implement the most powerful features of Ceph

Take tiny steps to enter the big world of data science through this interesting guide About This Book ? Learn the fundamentals of machine learning and build your own intelligent applications ? Master the art of building your own machine learning systems with this example-based practical guide ? Work with important classification and regression algorithms and other machine learning techniques Who This Book Is For This book is for anyone interested in entering the data science stream with machine learning. Basic familiarity with Python is assumed. What You Will Learn ? Exploit the power of Python to handle data extraction, manipulation, and exploration techniques ? Use Python to visualize data spread across multiple dimensions and extract useful features ? Dive deep into the world of analytics to predict situations correctly ? Implement machine learning classification and regression algorithms from scratch in Python ? Be amazed to see the algorithms in action ? Evaluate the performance of a machine learning model and optimize it ? Solve interesting real-world problems using machine learning and Python as the journey unfolds In Detail Data science and machine learning are some of the top buzzwords in the technical world today. A resurging interest in machine learning is due to the same factors that have made data mining and Bayesian analysis more popular than ever. This book is your entry point to machine learning. This book starts with an introduction to machine learning and the Python language and shows you how to complete the setup. Moving ahead, you will learn all the important concepts such as, exploratory data analysis, data preprocessing, feature extraction, data visualization and clustering, classification, regression and model performance evaluation. With the help of various projects included, you will find it intriguing to acquire the mechanics of several important machine learning algorithms – they are no more obscure as they thought. Also, you will be guided step by step to build your own models from scratch. Toward the end, you will gather a broad picture of the machine learning ecosystem and best practices of applying machine learning techniques. Through this book, you will learn to tackle data-driven problems and implement your solutions with the powerful yet simple language, Python. Interesting and easy-to-follow examples, to name some, news topic classification, spam email detection, online ad click-through prediction, stock prices forecast, will keep you glued till you reach your goal. Style and approach This book is an enticing journey that starts from the very basics and gradually picks up pace as the story unfolds. Each concept is first succinctly defined in the larger context of things, followed by a detailed explanation of their application. Every concept is explained with the help of a project that solves a real-world problem, and involves hands-on work—giving you a deep insight into the world of machine learning. With simple yet rich language—Python—you will understand and be able to implement the examples with ease.

Explore and use the agile techniques of SAP Activate Framework in your SAP Projects. About This Book ? Explore the three pillars of SAP Activate and see how it works in different scenario. ? Understand and Implement Agile and Scrum concepts in SAP Activate. ? Get to Grisp with SAP Activate framework and manage your SAP projects effectively. Who This Book Is For This book is for readers who want to understand the working of SAP Activate and use it to manage SAP projects. Prior knowledge of SAP Hana is must. What You Will Learn ? Understand the fundamentals of SAP S4/HANA. ? Get familiar with the structure and characteristics of SAP Activate. ? Explore the application scenarios of SAP Activate. ? Use Agile and Scrum in SAP Projects effectively and efficiently ? Implement your learning into a sample project to explore and understand the benefits of SAP Activate methodology. In Detail It has been a general observation that most SAP consultants and professionals are used to the conventional waterfall methodology. Traditionally, this method has been there for ages and we all grew up learning about it and started practicing it in real world. The evolution of agile methodology has revolutionized the way we manage our projects and businesses. SAP Activate is an innovative, next generation business suite that allows producing working deliverables straight away. Manage your SAP Project with SAP Activate, will take your learning to the next level. The book promises to make you understand and practice the SAP Activate Framework. The focus is to take you on a journey of all the phases of SAP Activate methodology and make you understand all the phases with real time project examples. The author explains how SAP Activate methodology can be used through real-world use cases, with a comprehensive discussion on Agile and Scrum, in the context of SAP Project. You will get familiar with SAP S4HANA which is an incredibly innovative platform for businesses which can store business data, interpret it, analyze it, process it in real time, and use it when it's needed depending upon the business requirement. Style and approach An easy to follow approach with concepts explained via scenarios and project examples

Engineer naturally lean web pages and leverage the latest web platform features to dramatically boost page speed About This Book ? The first book for web developers that shows how to put AMP to work ? Improve your website's mobile experience and get more traffic ? Practical methods to achieve a step change in performance quickly and easily Who This Book Is For This book is for experienced web developers who are aware of the impact of slow-loading web pages on conversion rates and user engagement, and who are seeking to serve content to their end users in a rich and enticing way using the Accelerated Mobile Pages framework. You should be familiar with HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, and JSON. What You Will Learn ? Build, validate, and deploy AMP pages ? Create interactive user notifications, navigation menus, accordions, contact pages with forms and maps ? Monetize your traffic with a variety of ad styles and providers ? Analyze your traffic by integrating analytics providers and tracking user-behavior along several dimensions ? Embed social media with amp-youtube, amp-instagram, amp-twitter, and amp-facebook ? Build e-commerce functionality including product pages and shopping carts ? Deliver rich media experiences using AMP custom elements ? Use advanced deployment techniques to extend functionality ? Install ServiceWorkers and build Progressive Web Apps for offline use In Detail Google introduced the Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) project to give mobile users lightning-fast response times when accessing web pages on mobile devices. AMP delivers great user experiences by providing a framework for optimizing web pages that otherwise would take much longer to load on a mobile platform. This book shows how to solve page performance issues using the mobile web technologies available today. You will learn how to build instant-loading web pages, and have them featured more prominently on Google searches. If you want your website to succeed on mobile, if you care about SEO, and if you want to stay competitive, then this book is for you! You will go on a mobile web development journey that demonstrates with concrete examples how to build lightning-fast pages that will keep your visitors on-site and happy. This journey begins by showing how to build a simple blog article-style web page using AMP. As new concepts are introduced this page is gradually refined until you will have the skills and confidence to build a variety of rich and interactive mobile web pages. These will include e-commerce product pages, interactive forms and menus, maps and commenting systems, and even Progressive Web Apps. Style and approach Get step-by-step instructions to build web pages of different types, gain expert tricks to brand your pages without bloating them, and see methods to embed advertising.

South African born Elon Musk is the renowned entrepreneur and innovator behind PayPal, SpaceX, Tesla, and SolarCity. Musk wants to save our planet; he wants to send citizens into space, to form a colony on Mars; he wants to make money while doing these things; and he wants us all to know about it. He is the real-life inspiration for the Iron Man series of films starring Robert Downey Junior. The personal tale of Musk’s life comes with all the trappings one associates with a great, drama-filled story. He was a freakishly bright kid who was bullied brutally at school, and abused by his father. In the midst of these rough conditions, and the violence of apartheid South Africa, Musk still thrived academically and attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he paid his own way through school by turning his house into a club and throwing massive parties. He started a pair of huge dot-com successes, including PayPal, which eBay acquired for $1.5 billion in 2002. Musk was forced out as CEO and so began his lost years in which he decided to go it alone and baffled friends by investing his fortune in rockets and electric cars. Meanwhile Musk’s marriage disintegrated as his technological obsessions took over his life ... Elon Musk is the Steve Jobs of the present and the future, and for the past twelve months, he has been shadowed by tech reporter, Ashlee Vance. Elon Musk: How the Billionaire CEO of Spacex and Tesla is Shaping our Future is an important, exciting and intelligent account of the real-life Iron Man.

Build and program smart robots with the EV3. About This Book ? Efficiently build smart robots with the LEGO MINDSTORMS EV3 ? Discover building techniques and programming concepts that are used by engineers to prototype robots in the real world ? This project-based guide will teach you how to build exciting projects such as the objecta-tracking tank, ultimate all-terrain vehicle, remote control race car, or even a GPS-navigating autonomous vehicle Who This Book Is For This book is for hobbyists, robotic engineers, and programmers who understand the basics of the EV3 programming language and are familiar with building with LEGO Technic and want to try some advanced projects. If you want to learn some new engineering techniques and take your experience with the EV3 to the next level, then this book is for you. What You Will Learn ? Understand the characteristics that make a robot smart ? Grasp proportional beacon following and use proximity sensors to track an object ? Discover how mechanisms such as rack-and-pinion and the worm gear work ? Program a custom GUI to make a robot more user friendly ? Make a fun and quirky interactive robot that has its own personality ? Get to know the principles of remote control and programming car-style steering ? Understand some of the mechanisms that enable a car to drive ? Navigate to a destination with a GPS receiver In Detail Smart robots are an ever-increasing part of our daily lives. With LEGO MINDSTORMS EV3, you can now prototype your very own small-scale smart robot that uses specialized programming and hardware to complete a mission. EV3 is a robotics platform for enthusiasts of all ages and experience levels that makes prototyping robots accessible to all. This book will walk you through six different projects that range from intermediate to advanced level. The projects will show you building and programming techniques that are used by engineers in the real world, which will help you build your own smart robot. You'll see how to make the most of the EV3 robotics platform and build some awesome smart robots. The book starts by introducing some real-world examples of smart robots. Then, we'll walk you through six different projects and explain the features that allow these robots to make intelligent decisions. The book will guide you as you build your own object-tracking tank, a box-climbing robot, an interactive robotic shark, a quirky bipedal robot, a speedy remote control race car, and a GPS-navigating robot. By the end of this book, you'll have the skills necessary to build and program your own smart robots with EV3. Style and approach This book will introduce you to the world of smart robots, then guide you through six different projects that can be completed with the LEGO MINDSTORMS EV3. The projects range from intermediate to advanced difficulty. The book will enable you to learn by example, walking you through the building and programming for each project and teaching you about the engineering concepts that allow each smart robot to complete its mission.

Learn how to write efficient, clean, and reusable code with Scala About This Book ? Unleash the power of Scala and apply it in the real world to build scalable and robust applications. ? Learn about using and implementing Creational, Structural, Behavioral, and Functional design patterns in Scala ? Learn how to build scalable and extendable applications efficiently Who This Book Is For If you want to increase your understanding of Scala and apply design patterns to real-life application development, then this book is for you.Prior knowledge of Scala language is assumed/ expected. What You Will Learn ? Immerse yourself in industry-standard design patterns—structural, creational, and behavioral—to create extraordinary applications ? See the power of traits and their application in Scala ? Implement abstract and self types and build clean design patterns ? Build complex entity relationships using structural design patterns ? Create applications faster by applying functional design patterns In Detail Design patterns make developers’ lives easier by helping them write great software that is easy to maintain, runs efficiently, and is valuable to the company or people concerned. You’ll learn about the various features of Scala and will be able to apply well-known, industry-proven design patterns in your work. The book starts off by focusing on some of the most interesting and latest features of Scala while using practical real-world examples. We will be learning about IDE’s and Aspect Oriented Programming. We will be looking into different components in Scala. We will also cover the popular "Gang of Four" design patterns and show you how to incorporate functional patterns effectively. The book ends with a practical example that demonstrates how the presented material can be combined in real-life applications. You’ll learn the necessary concepts to build enterprise-grade applications. By the end of this book, you’ll have enough knowledge and understanding to quickly assess problems and come up with elegant solutions. Style and approach The design patterns in the book are explained using real-world, step-by-step examples. For each design pattern, there are tips on when to use it and when to look for something more suitable. This book can also be used as a practical guide, showing you how to leverage design patterns effectively. We've designed the book to be used as a quick reference guide while creating applications.

Build rich and collaborative applications using client-side code with React, Redux, and Firebase About This Book ? A practical guide covering the full stack for web development with React 16 and Firebase ? Leverage the power of Firebase Cloud Storage, messaging, functions, OAuth, and database security to develop serverless web applications. ? Develop high-performance applications without the hassle of setting up complex web infrastructure. Who This Book Is For This book is for JavaScript developers who have some previous knowledge of React and want to develop serverless, full-stack applications but without the hassle of setting up a complex infrastructure. What You Will Learn ? Install powerful React.js and Firebase tools to make development much more efficient ? Create React components with Firebase to save and retrieve the data in real-time ? Use Firebase Authentication to make your React user interface secure ? Develop React and Firebase applications with Redux integration ? Firebase database security rules ? Firebase Cloud Storage Integration to upload and store data on the cloud ? Create a complete real-time application with React and firebase ? Using Firebase Cloud messaging and Cloud functions with React ? Firebase Cloud Storage integration with React In Detail ReactJS is a wonderful framework for UI development. Firebase as a backend with React is a great choice as it is easy, powerful, and provides great developer experience. It removes a lot of boilerplate code from your app and allows you to focus on your app to get it out quickly to users. Firebase with React is also a good choice for Most Viable Product (MVP) development. This book provides more practical insights rather than just theoretical concepts and includes basic to advanced examples – from hello world to a real-time seat booking app and Helpdesk application This book will cover the essentials of Firebase and React.js and will take you on a fast-paced journey through building real-time applications with Firebase features such as Cloud Storage, Cloud Function, Hosting and the Realtime Database. We will learn how to secure our application by using Firebase authentication and database security rules. We will leverage the power of Redux to organize data in the front-end, since Redux attempts to make state mutations predictable by imposing certain restrictions on how and when updates can happen. Towards the end of the book you will have improved your React skills by realizing the potential of Firebase to create real-time serverless web applications. Style and approach Practical insights rather than just theoretical concepts while including basic to advanced examples – from hello world to a real-time seat booking app and Helpdesk application.

Create succinct and expressive implementations with functional programming in Python About This Book ? Learn how to choose between imperative and functional approaches based on expressiveness, clarity, and performance ? Get familiar with complex concepts such as monads, concurrency, and immutability ? Apply functional Python to common Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA) programming problems Who This Book Is For This book is for Python developers who would like to perform Functional programming with Python. Python Programming knowledge is assumed. What You Will Learn ? Use Python's generator functions and generator expressions to work with collections in a non-strict (or lazy) manner ? Utilize Python library modules including itertools, functools, multiprocessing, and concurrent features to ensure efficient functional programs ? Use Python strings with object-oriented suffix notation and prefix notation ? Avoid stateful classes with families of tuples ? Design and implement decorators to create composite functions ? Use functions such as max(), min(), map(), filter(), and sorted() ? Write higher-order functions In Detail If you’re a Python developer who wants to discover how to take the power of functional programming (FP) and bring it into your own programs, then this book is essential for you, even if you know next to nothing about the paradigm. Starting with a general overview of functional concepts, you’ll explore common functional features such as first-class and higher-order functions, pure functions, and more. You’ll see how these are accomplished in Python 3.6 to give you the core foundations you’ll build upon. After that, you’ll discover common functional optimizations for Python to help your apps reach even higher speeds. You’ll learn FP concepts such as lazy evaluation using Python’s generator functions and expressions. Moving forward, you’ll learn to design and implement decorators to create composite functions. You'll also explore data preparation techniques and data exploration in depth, and see how the Python standard library fits the functional programming model. Finally, to top off your journey into the world of functional Python, you’ll at look at the PyMonad project and some larger examples to put everything into perspective. Style and approach This book provides a general overview of functional concepts and then delves deeper into the functional features, showing you how the Python standard library fits the functional programming model. It also demonstrates how to implement common functional programming design patterns and techniques in Python.

Design accessible and creative games across genres, platforms, and development realities About This Book ? Implement the skills and techniques required to work in a professional studio ? Ace the core principles and processes of level design, world building, and storytelling ? Design interactive characters that animate the gaming world Who This Book Is For Whether you are a student eager to design a game or a junior game designer looking for your first role as a professional, this book will help you with the fundamentals of game design. By focusing on best practices and a pragmatic approach, Practical Game Design provides insights into the arts and crafts from two senior game designers that will interest more seasoned professionals in the game industry. What You Will Learn ? Define the scope and structure of a game project ? Conceptualize a game idea and present it to others ? Design gameplay systems and communicate them clearly and thoroughly ? Build and validate engaging game mechanics ? Design successful business models and prepare your games for live operations ? Master the principles behind level design, worldbuilding and storytelling ? Improve the quality of a game by playtesting and polishing it In Detail If you are looking for an up-to-date and highly applicable guide to game design, then you have come to the right place! Immerse yourself in the fundamentals of game design with this book, written by two highly experienced industry professionals to share their profound insights as well as give valuable advice on creating games across genres and development platforms. Practical Game Design covers the basics of game design one piece at a time. Starting with learning how to conceptualize a game idea and present it to the development team, you will gradually move on to devising a design plan for the whole project and adapting solutions from other games. You will also discover how to produce original game mechanics without relying on existing reference material, and test and eliminate anticipated design risks. You will then design elements that compose the playtime of a game, followed by making game mechanics, content, and interface accessible to all players. You will also find out how to simultaneously ensure that the gameplay mechanics and content are working as intended. As the book reaches its final chapters, you will learn to wrap up a game ahead of its release date, work through the different challenges of designing free-to-play games, and understand how to significantly improve their quality through iteration, polishing and playtesting. Style and approach A practical step by step guide to get you up and running with Game Design from scratch

Build applications and infrastructures that leverage Function-as-a-Service and Docker About This Book ? Implement containerization in Serverless/FaaS environments ? Utilize Docker as a functional unit of work for Serverless/FaaS platforms ? Use Docker as a portable infrastructure for Serverless Applications Who This Book Is For If you are a Developer, a Docker Engineer, a DevOps Engineer, or any stakeholder interested in learning the use of Docker on Serverless environments then this book is for you. What You Will Learn ? Learn what Serverless and FaaS applications are ? Get acquainted with the architectures of three major serverless systems ? Explore how Docker technologies can help develop Serverless applications ? Create and maintain FaaS infrastructures ? Set up Docker infrastructures to serve as on-premises FaaS infrastructures ? Define functions for Serverless applications with Docker containers In Detail Serverless applications have gained a lot of popularity among developers and are currently the buzzwords in the tech market. Docker and serverless are two terms that go hand-in-hand. This book will start by explaining serverless and Function-as-a-Service (FaaS) concepts, and why they are important. Then, it will introduce the concepts of containerization and how Docker fits into the Serverless ideology. It will explore the architectures and components of three major Docker-based FaaS platforms, how to deploy and how to use their CLI. Then, this book will discuss how to set up and operate a production-grade Docker cluster. We will cover all concepts of FaaS frameworks with practical use cases, followed by deploying and orchestrating these serverless systems using Docker. Finally, we will also explore advanced topics and prototypes for FaaS architectures in the last chapter. By the end of this book, you will be in a position to build and deploy your own FaaS platform using Docker. Style and approach A practical guide that offers a simple way to easily understand Serverless Applications utilizing Docker as the development environment.

Learn the most powerful and primary programming language for writing smart contracts and find out how to write, deploy, and test smart contracts in Ethereum. About This Book ? Get you up and running with Solidity Programming language ? Build Ethereum Smart Contracts with Solidity as your scripting language ? Learn to test and deploy the smart contract to your private Blockchain Who This Book Is For This book is for anyone who would like to get started with Solidity Programming for developing an Ethereum smart contract. No prior knowledge of EVM is required. What You Will Learn ? Learn the basics and foundational concepts of Solidity and Ethereum ? Explore the Solidity language and its uniqueness in depth ? Create new accounts and submit transactions to blockchain ? Get to know the complete language in detail to write smart contracts ? Learn about major tools to develop and deploy smart contracts ? Write defensive code using exception handling and error checking ? Understand Truffle basics and the debugging process In Detail Solidity is a contract-oriented language whose syntax is highly influenced by JavaScript, and is designed to compile code for the Ethereum Virtual Machine. Solidity Programming Essentials will be your guide to understanding Solidity programming to build smart contracts for Ethereum and blockchain from ground-up. We begin with a brief run-through of blockchain, Ethereum, and their most important concepts or components. You will learn how to install all the necessary tools to write, test, and debug Solidity contracts on Ethereum. Then, you will explore the layout of a Solidity source file and work with the different data types. The next set of recipes will help you work with operators, control structures, and data structures while building your smart contracts. We take you through function calls, return types, function modifers, and recipes in object-oriented programming with Solidity. Learn all you can on event logging and exception handling, as well as testing and debugging smart contracts. By the end of this book, you will be able to write, deploy, and test smart contracts in Ethereum. This book will bring forth the essence of writing contracts using Solidity and also help you develop Solidity skills in no time. Style and approach Solidity is a high-level programming language best understood using examples. After covering basic concepts of Ethereum and Solidity, programming constructs will be explained with help of examples. As chapters progress, deployment, usage and testing of contacts will form major aspect of the book. Troubleshooting and unit testing is an important exercise and skill to master this language will also be covered in this book.

Learn to build professional full-stack web apps with Vue.js and Laravel About This Book ? End-to-end guide on full-stack development with Vue.js 2 and Laravel 5 ? Developing modern user interfaces with a reusable component-based architecture ? Use Webpack to improve applications performance and development workflow ? Explore the features of Vuex to build applications that are powerful, consistent, and maintainable Who This Book Is For This book targets developers who are new to Vue.js, Laravel, or both, and are seeking a practical, best-practice approach to development with these technologies. They must have some knowledge of HTML, CSS and Java*. What You Will Learn ? Core features of Vue.js to create sophisticated user interfaces ? Build a secure backend API with Laravel ? Learn a state-of-the-art web development workflow with Webpack ? Full-stack app design principles and best practices ? Learn to deploy a full-stack app to a cloud server and CDN ? Managing complex application state with Vuex ? Securing a web service with Laravel Passport In Detail Vue is a JavaScript framework that can be used for anything from simple data display to sophisticated front-end applications and Laravel is a PHP framework used for developing fast and secure web-sites. This book gives you practical knowledge of building modern full-stack web apps from scratch using Vue with a Laravel back end. In this book, you will build a room-booking website named "Vuebnb". This project will show you the core features of Vue, Laravel and other state-of-the-art web development tools and techniques. The book begins with a thorough introduction to Vue.js and its core concepts like data binding, directives and computed properties, with each concept being explained first, then put into practice in the case-study project. You will then use Laravel to set up a web service and integrate the front end into a full-stack app. You will be shown a best-practice development workflow using tools like Webpack and Laravel Mix. With the basics covered, you will learn how sophisticated UI features can be added using ES+ syntax and a component-based architecture. You will use Vue Router to make the app multi-page and Vuex to manage application state. Finally, you will learn how to use Laravel Passport for authenticated AJAX requests between Vue and the API, completing the full-stack architecture. Vuebnb will then be prepared for production and deployed to a free Heroku cloud server. Style and approach Learn front-end Vue techniques, back-end Laravel skills, and put them together to build a working application

Expert techniques for building fast servers and scalable, real-time network applications with minimal effort; rewritten for Node.js 8 and Node.js 9 About This Book ? Packed with practical examples and explanations, Mastering Node.js contains everything you need to take your applications to the next level. ? Unleash the full potential of Node.js 9 to build real-time and scalable applications. ? Gain in-depth knowledge of asynchronous programming, event loops, and parallel data processing. ? Explore Node's innovative event-non-blocking design, and build professional applications with the help of detailed examples. Who This Book Is For This book is targeted at JavaScript developers who want to take an in-depth look at the latest Node.js framework to create faster, scalable, real-time backend applications. Basic JavaScript programming knowledge—and also some previous Node.js development experience—are mandatory to get the best out of this book What You Will Learn ? Build an Electron desktop app using Node that manages a filesystem ? Explore Streams and understand how they apply to building networked services ? Develop and deploy an SMS-driven customer service application ? Use WebSockets for rapid bi-directional communication ? Construct serverless applications with Amazon Lambda ? Test and debug with headless browsers, CPU profiling, Mocha, Sinon, and more ? Scale applications vertically and horizontally across multiple cores and web services In Detail Node.js, a modern development environment that enables developers to write server- and client-side code with JavaScript, thus becoming a popular choice among developers. This book covers the features of Node that are especially helpful to developers creating highly concurrent real-time applications. It takes you on a tour of Node's innovative event non-blocking design, showing you how to build professional applications. This edition has been updated to cover the latest features of Node 9 and ES6. All code examples and demo applications have been completely rewritten using the latest techniques, introducing Promises, functional programming, async/await, and other cutting-edge patterns for writing JavaScript code. Learn how to use microservices to simplify the design and composition of distributed systems. From building serverless cloud functions to native C++ plugins, from chatbots to massively scalable SMS-driven applications, you'll be prepared for building the next generation of distributed software. By the end of this book, you'll be building better Node applications more quickly, with less code and more power, and know how to run them at scale in production environments. Style and approach Mastering Node.js contains all of the examples and explanations you'll need to build applications in a short amount of time and at a low cost, running rapidly and at scale.