Implement intelligent agents using PyTorch to solve classic AI problems, play console games like Atari, and perform tasks such as autonomous driving using the CARLA driving simulator Key Features *Explore the OpenAI Gym toolkit and interface to use over 700 learning tasks *Implement agents to solve simple to complex AI problems *Study learning environments and discover how to create your own Book Description Many real-world problems can be broken down into tasks that require a series of decisions to be made or actions to be taken. The ability to solve such tasks without a machine being programmed requires a machine to be artificially intelligent and capable of learning to adapt. This book is an easy-to-follow guide to implementing learning algorithms for machine software agents in order to solve discrete or continuous sequential decision making and control tasks. Hands-On Intelligent Agents with OpenAI Gym takes you through the process of building intelligent agent algorithms using deep reinforcement learning starting from the implementation of the building blocks for configuring, training, logging, visualizing, testing, and monitoring the agent. You will walk through the process of building intelligent agents from scratch to perform a variety of tasks. In the closing chapters, the book provides an overview of the latest learning environments and learning algorithms, along with pointers to more resources that will help you take your deep reinforcement learning skills to the next level. What you will learn *Explore intelligent agents and learning environments *Understand the basics of RL and deep RL *Get started with OpenAI Gym and PyTorch for deep reinforcement learning *Discover deep Q learning agents to solve discrete optimal control tasks *Create custom learning environments for real-world problems *Apply a deep actor-critic agent to drive a car autonomously in CARLA *Use the latest learning environments and algorithms to upgrade your intelligent agent development skills Who this book is for If you’re a student, game/machine learning developer, or AI enthusiast looking to get started with building intelligent agents and algorithms to solve a variety of problems with the OpenAI Gym interface, this book is for you. You will also find this book useful if you want to learn how to build deep reinforcement learning-based agents to solve problems in your domain of interest. Though the book covers all the basic concepts that you need to know, some working knowledge of Python programming language will help you get the most out of it.

Build, design, and style beautiful and informative applications on the Salesforce Lightning platform Key Features *Build and Test Lightning Components that enhance application usability and adaptability *Apply Security Best Practices to your Custom Lightning Components *Design Lightning Components for Salesforce UIs such as Lightning Pages, Salesforce 1 Application, Communities, and more. Book Description Built on the Salesforce App Cloud, the new Salesforce Lightning Experience combines three major components: Lightning Design System, Lightning App Builder, and Lightning Components, to provide an enhanced user experience. This book will enable you to quickly create modern, enterprise apps with Lightning Component Framework. You will start by building simple Lightning Components and understanding the Lightning Components architecture. The chapters cover the basics of Lightning Component Framework semantics and syntax, the security features provided by Locker Service, and use of third-party libraries inside Lightning Components. The later chapters focus on debugging, performance tuning, testing using Lightning Testing Services, and how to publish Lightning Components on Salesforce AppExchange. What you will learn *Understand Lightning Components architecture *Learn Locker security best practices *Debug and Improve performance of your Lightning Components *Use third-party libraries along with Lightning Component Framework *Learn how to publish Lightning Components on AppExchange *Use Lightning Out to take your Lightning Components outside the Salesforce platform Who this book is for This book is for Salesforce developers or developers from other platforms who are familiar with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript and want to build and test Salesforce Lightning components. No knowledge of Salesforce Lightning is required.

Enhance your Kotlin programming skills by building 3 real-world applications About This Book ? Build three full-fledged, engaging applications from scratch and learn to deploy them ? Enhance your app development and programming activities with Kotlin’s powerful and intuitive tools and utilities. ? Experience the gentle learning curve, expressiveness, and intuitiveness of Kotlin, as you develop your own applications Who This Book Is For This book is for those who are new to Kotlin or are familiar with the basics, having dabbled with Java until now. Basic programming knowledge is mandatory. What You Will Learn ? Learn the building blocks of the Kotlin programming language ? Develop powerful RESTful microservices for Android applications ? Create reactive Android applications efficiently ? Implement an MVC architecture pattern and dependency management using Kotlin ? Centralize, transform, and stash data with Logstash ? Secure applications using Spring Security ? Deploy Kotlin microservices to AWS and Android applications to the Play Store In Detail Kotlin greatly reduces the verbosity of source code. With Google having announced their support for Kotlin as a first-class language for writing Android apps, now's the time learn how to create apps from scratch with Kotlin Kotlin Programming By Example takes you through the building blocks of Kotlin, such as functions and classes. You’ll explore various features of Kotlin by building three applications of varying complexity. For a quick start to Android development, we look at building a classic game, Tetris, and elaborate on object-oriented programming in Kotlin. Our next application will be a messenger app, a level up in terms of complexity. Before moving onto the third app, we take a look at data persistent methods, helping us learn about the storage and retrieval of useful applications. Our final app is a place reviewer: a web application that will make use of the Google Maps API and Place Picker. By the end of this book, you will have gained experience of of creating and deploying Android applications using Kotlin. Style and approach Here we will build three exciting projects in Kotlin which will demonstrate how to effectively use Kotlin language constructs

Be an adaptive thinker that leads the way to Artificial Intelligence About This Book ? AI-based examples to guide you in designing and implementing machine intelligence ? Develop your own method for future AI solutions ? Acquire advanced AI, machine learning, and deep learning design skills Who This Book Is For Artificial Intelligence by Example is a simple, explanatory, and descriptive guide for junior developers, experienced developers, technology consultants, and those interested in AI who want to understand the fundamentals of Artificial Intelligence and implement it practically by devising smart solutions. Prior experience with Python and statistical knowledge is essential to make the most out of this book. What You Will Learn ? Use adaptive thinking to solve real-life AI case studies ? Rise beyond being a modern-day factory code worker ? Acquire advanced AI, machine learning, and deep learning designing skills ? Learn about cognitive NLP chatbots, quantum computing, and IoT and blockchain technology ? Understand future AI solutions and adapt quickly to them ? Develop out-of-the-box thinking to face any challenge the market presents In Detail Artificial Intelligence has the potential to replicate humans in every field. This book serves as a starting point for you to understand how AI is built, with the help of intriguing examples and case studies. Artificial Intelligence By Example will make you an adaptive thinker and help you apply concepts to real-life scenarios. Using some of the most interesting AI examples, right from a simple chess engine to a cognitive chatbot, you will learn how to tackle the machine you are competing with. You will study some of the most advanced machine learning models, understand how to apply AI to blockchain and IoT, and develop emotional quotient in chatbots using neural networks. You will move on to designing AI solutions in a simple manner rather than get confused by complex architectures and techniques. This comprehensive guide will be a starter kit for you to develop AI applications on your own. By the end of this book, will have understood the fundamentals of AI and worked through a number of case studies that will help you develop business vision. Style and approach An easy-to-follow step by step guide which will help you get to grips with real world application of Artificial Intelligence

Develop, deploy, and streamline your data science projects with the most popular end-to-end platform, Anaconda About This Book ? Use Anaconda to find solutions for clustering, classification, and linear regression ? Analyze your data efficiently with the most powerful data science stack ? Use the Anaconda cloud to store, share, and discover projects and libraries Who This Book Is For Hands-On Data Science with Anaconda is for you if you are a developer who is looking for the best tools in the market to perform data science. It’s also ideal for data analysts and data science professionals who want to improve the efficiency of their data science applications by using the best libraries in multiple languages. Basic programming knowledge with R or Python and introductory knowledge of linear algebra is expected. What You Will Learn ? Perform cleaning, sorting, classification, clustering, regression, and dataset modeling using Anaconda ? Use the package manager conda and discover, install, and use functionally efficient and scalable packages ? Get comfortable with heterogeneous data exploration using multiple languages within a project ? Perform distributed computing and use Anaconda Accelerate to optimize computational powers ? Discover and share packages, notebooks, and environments, and use shared project drives on Anaconda Cloud ? Tackle advanced data prediction problems In Detail Anaconda is an open source platform that brings together the best tools for data science professionals with more than 100 popular packages supporting Python, Scala, and R languages. Hands-On Data Science with Anaconda gets you started with Anaconda and demonstrates how you can use it to perform data science operations in the real world. The book begins with setting up the environment for Anaconda platform in order to make it accessible for tools and frameworks such as Jupyter, pandas, matplotlib, Python, R, Julia, and more. You’ll walk through package manager Conda, through which you can automatically manage all packages including cross-language dependencies, and work across Linux, macOS, and Windows. You’ll explore all the essentials of data science and linear algebra to perform data science tasks using packages such as SciPy, contrastive, scikit-learn, Rattle, and Rmixmod. Once you’re accustomed to all this, you’ll start with operations in data science such as cleaning, sorting, and data classification. You’ll move on to learning how to perform tasks such as clustering, regression, prediction, and building machine learning models and optimizing them. In addition to this, you’ll learn how to visualize data using the packages available for Julia, Python, and R. Style and approach This book is your step-by-step guide full of use cases, examples and illustrations to get you well-versed with the concepts of Anaconda.

Optimize the powerful techniques of Java 9 to boost your application's performance About This Book ? Tackle all kinds of performance-related issues and streamline your development ? Dive into the new features of Java 9 ? Implement highly efficient and reliable codes with the help of new APIs of Java ? Embedded with assessments that will help you revise the concepts you have learned in this book Who This Book Is For This book is targeted at developers who would like to build reliable and high-performance applications with Java. What You Will Learn ? Familiarize with modular development and its impact on performance ? Learn various string-related performance improvements, including compact string and modify string concatenation ? Explore various underlying compiler improvements, such as tiered attribution and Ahead-of-Time (AOT) compilation ? Learn security manager improvements ? Understand enhancements in graphics rasterizers ? Use of command-line tools to speed up application development ? Learn how to implement multithreading and reactive programming ? Build microservices in Java 9 ? Implement APIs to improve application code In Detail Java 9 which is one of the most popular application development languages. The latest released version Java 9 comes with a host of new features and new APIs with lots of ready to use components to build efficient and scalable applications. Streams, parallel and asynchronous processing, multithreading, JSON support, reactive programming, and microservices comprise the hallmark of modern programming and are now fully integrated into the JDK. This book focuses on providing quick, practical solutions to enhance your application's performance. You will explore the new features, APIs, and various tools added in Java 9 that help to speed up the development process. You will learn about jshell, Ahead-of-Time (AOT) compilation, and the basic threads related topics including sizing and synchronization. You will also explore various strategies for building microservices including container-less, self-contained, and in-container. This book is ideal for developers who would like to build reliable and high-performance applications with Java. This book is embedded with useful assessments that will help you revise the concepts you have learned in this book. Style and approach This book is a fast-paced guide that provides practical solutions to enhance your application’s performance. Note: This book is a blend of text and quizzes, all packaged up keeping your journey in mind. It includes content from the following Packt product: ? Java 9 High Performance by Mayur Ramgir and Nick Samoylov

Leverage this step-by-step guide to build a highly secure, fault-tolerant, and scalable Cloud environment About This Book ? Learn how to leverage various Amazon Web Services (AWS) components and services to build a secure, reliable, and robust environment to host your applications on. ? Delve into core AWS service offerings with hands-on tutorials, real-world use case scenarios, and best practices. ? A self-paced, systematic, and step-by-step guide to learning and implementing AWS in your own environment. Who This Book Is For This book is for those who want to learn and leverage the rich plethora of services provided by AWS. Although no prior experience with AWS is required, it is recommended that you have some hands-on experience of Linux, Web Services, and basic networking. What You Will Learn ? Take an in-depth look at what's new with AWS, along with how to effectively manage and automate your EC2 infrastructure with AWS Systems Manager ? Deploy and scale your applications with ease using AWS Elastic Beanstalk and Amazon Elastic File System ? Secure and govern your environments using AWS CloudTrail, AWS Config, and AWS Shield ? Learn the DevOps way using a combination of AWS CodeCommit, AWS CodeDeploy, and AWS CodePipeline ? Run big data analytics and workloads using Amazon EMR and Amazon Redshift ? Learn to back up and safeguard your data using AWS Data Pipeline ? Get started with the Internet of Things using AWS IoT and AWS Greengrass In Detail Many businesses are moving from traditional data centers to AWS because of its reliability, vast service offerings, lower costs, and high rate of innovation. AWS can be used to accomplish a variety of both simple and tedious tasks. Whether you are a seasoned system admin or a rookie, this book will help you to learn all the skills you need to work with the AWS cloud. This book guides you through some of the most popular AWS services, such as EC2, Elastic Beanstalk, EFS, CloudTrail, Redshift, EMR, Data Pipeline, and IoT using a simple, real-world, application-hosting example. This book will also enhance your application delivery skills with the latest AWS services, such as CodeCommit, CodeDeploy, and CodePipeline, to provide continuous delivery and deployment, while also securing and monitoring your environment's workflow. Each chapter is designed to provide you with maximal information about each AWS service, coupled with easy to follow, hands-on steps, best practices, tips, and recommendations. By the end of the book, you will be able to create a highly secure, fault-tolerant, and scalable environment for your applications to run on. Style and approach This in-depth and insightful guide is filled with easy-to-follow examples, real-world use cases, best practices, and recommendations that will help you design and leverage some of the most commonly used AWS services.

This book will teach the concepts of test driven development in Java so you can build clean, maintainable and robust code About This Book ? Explore the most popular TDD tools and frameworks and become more proficient in building applications ? Create applications with better code design, fewer bugs, and higher test coverage, enabling you to get them to market quickly ? Implement test-driven programming methods into your development workflows Who This Book Is For If you're an experienced Java developer and want to implement more effective methods of programming systems and applications, then this book is for you. What You Will Learn ? Explore the tools and frameworks required for effective TDD development ? Perform the Red-Green-Refactor process efficiently, the pillar around which all other TDD procedures are based ? Master effective unit testing in isolation from the rest of your code ? Design simple and easily maintainable code by implementing different techniques ? Use mocking frameworks and techniques to easily write and quickly execute tests ? Develop an application to implement behavior-driven development in conjunction with unit testing ? Enable and disable features using feature toggles In Detail Test-driven development (TDD) is a development approach that relies on a test-first procedure that emphasizes writing a test before writing the necessary code, and then refactoring the code to optimize it.The value of performing TDD with Java, one of the longest established programming languages, is to improve the productivity of programmers and the maintainability and performance of code, and develop a deeper understanding of the language and how to employ it effectively. Starting with the basics of TDD and understanding why its adoption is beneficial, this book will take you from the first steps of TDD with Java until you are confident enough to embrace the practice in your day-to-day routine.You'll be guided through setting up tools, frameworks, and the environment you need, and we will dive right into hands-on exercises with the goal of mastering one practice, tool, or framework at a time. You'll learn about the Red-Green-Refactor procedure, how to write unit tests, and how to use them as executable documentation.With this book, you'll also discover how to design simple and easily maintainable code, work with mocks, utilize behavior-driven development, refactor old legacy code, and release a half-finished feature to production with feature toggles.You will finish this book with a deep understanding of the test-driven development methodology and the confidence to apply it to application programming with Java. Style and approach An easy-to-follow, hands-on guide to building applications through effective coding practices. This book covers practical examples by introducing different problems, each one designed as a learning exercise to help you understand each aspect of TDD.

Manage state in Angular to write high performing web apps by combining the power of Flux, RxJS, and NgRx About This Book ? Learn what makes an excellent Angular application architecture ? Use Redux to write performant, consistent Angular applications ? Incorporate Reactive Programming principles and RxJS to make it easier to develop, test, and debug your Angular applications Who This Book Is For If you have been developing Angular applications and want to dive deeper into the Angular architecture with Redux, RxJS, and NgRx to write robust web apps, then this book is for you. What You Will Learn ? Understand the one-way data flow and Flux pattern ? Work with functional programming and asynchronous data streams ? Figure out how RxJS can help us address the flaws in promises ? Set up different versions of cascading calls ? Explore advanced operators ? Get familiar with the Redux pattern and its principles ? Test and debug different features of your application ? Build your own lightweight app using Flux, Redux, and NgRx In Detail Managing the state of large-scale web applications is a highly challenging task with the need to align different components, backends, and web workers harmoniously. When it comes to Angular, you can use NgRx, which combines the simplicity of Redux with the reactive programming power of RxJS to build your application architecture, making your code elegant and easy to reason about, debug, and test. In this book, we start by looking at the different ways of architecting Angular applications and some of the patterns that are involved in it. This will be followed by a discussion on one-way data flow, the Flux pattern, and the origin of Redux. The book introduces you to declarative programming or, more precisely, functional programming and talks about its advantages. We then move on to the reactive programming paradigm. Reactive programming is a concept heavily used in Angular and is at the core of NgRx. Later, we look at RxJS, as a library and master it. We thoroughly describe how Redux works and how to implement it from scratch. The two last chapters of the book cover everything NgRx has to offer in terms of core functionality and supporting libraries, including how to build a micro implementation of NgRx. This book will empower you to not only use Redux and NgRx to the fullest, but also feel confident in building your own version, should you need it. Style and approach This book covers everything there is to know to get well-acquainted with Angular without bogging you down. Everything is neatly laid out under clear headings for quick consultation, giving you the information required to understand a concept immediately.

Design RPA solutions to perform a wide range of transactional tasks with minimal cost and maximum ROI About This Book ? A beginner's guide to learn Robotic Process Automation and its impact on the modern world ? Design, test, and perform enterprise automation task with UiPath ? Create Automation apps and deploy them to all the computers in your department. Who This Book Is For If you would like to pursue a career in Robotic Process Automation or improve the efficiency of your businesses by automating common tasks, then this book is perfect for you. Prior programming knowledge of either Visual Basic or C# will be useful. What You Will Learn ? Understand Robotic Process Automation technology ? Learn UiPath programming techniques to deploy robot configurations ? Explore various data extraction techniques ? Learn about integrations with various popular applications such as SAP and MS Office ? Debug a programmed robot including logging and exception handling ? Maintain code version and source control ? Deploy and control Bots with UiPath Orchestrator In Detail Robotic Process Automation (RPA) enables automating business processes using software robots. Software robots interpret, trigger responses, and communicate with other systems just like humans do. Robotic processes and intelligent automation tools can help businesses improve the effectiveness of services faster and at a lower cost than current methods. This book is the perfect start to your automation journey, with a special focus on one of the most popular RPA tools: UiPath. Learning Robotic Process Automation takes you on a journey from understanding the basics of RPA to advanced implementation techniques. You will become oriented in the UiPath interface and learn about its workflow. Once you are familiar with the environment, we will get hands-on with automating different applications such as Excel, SAP, Windows and web applications, screen and web scraping, working with user events, as well as understanding exceptions and debugging. By the end of the book, you'll not only be able to build your first software bot, but also you'll wire it to perform various automation tasks with the help of best practices for bot deployment. Style and approach This book will help you kick-start your automation journey with a special focus on one of the most popular RPA tools: UiPath.

Delve deep into various security aspects of AWS to build and maintain a secured environment About This Book ? Learn to secure your network, infrastructure, data, and applications in AWS cloud ? Use AWS managed security services to automate security ? Dive deep into various aspects such as the security model, compliance, access management and much more to build and maintain a secured environment ? Explore Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF) and its components ? Embedded with assessments that will help you revise the concepts you have learned in this book Who This Book Is For This book is for all IT professionals, system administrators, security analysts, solution architects, and chief information security officers who are responsible for securing workloads in AWS for their organizations. What You Will Learn ? Get familiar with VPC components, features, and benefits ? Learn to create and secure your private network in AWS ? Explore encryption and decryption fundamentals ? Understand monitoring, logging, and auditing in AWS ? Ensure data security in AWS ? Secure your web and mobile applications in AWS ? Learn security best practices for IAM, VPC, shared security responsibility model, and so on In Detail With organizations moving their workloads, applications, and infrastructure to the cloud at an unprecedented pace, security of all these resources has been a paradigm shift for all those who are responsible for security; experts, novices, and apprentices alike. This book focuses on using native AWS security features and managed AWS services to help you achieve continuous security. Starting with an introduction to Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) to secure your AWS VPC, you will quickly explore various components that make up VPC such as subnets, security groups, various gateways, and many more. You will also learn to protect data in the AWS platform for various AWS services by encrypting and decrypting data in AWS. You will also learn to secure web and mobile applications in AWS cloud. This book is ideal for all IT professionals, system administrators, security analysts, solution architects, and chief information security officers who are responsible for securing workloads in AWS for their organizations. This book is embedded with useful assessments that will help you revise the concepts you have learned in this book. Style and approach This book follows a practical approach delving into different aspects of AWS security. It focuses on using native AWS security features and managed AWS services to help you achieve continuous security. Note: This book is a blend of text and quizzes, all packaged up keeping your journey in mind. It includes content from the following Packt product: ? Mastering AWS Security by Albert Anthony

Unlock the power of Spring Boot to build and deploy production-ready microservices About This Book ? Get to know the advanced features of Spring Boot in order to develop and monitor applications ? Use Spring cloud to deploy and manage microservices on the cloud ? Look at embedded servers and deploy a test application to a PaaS Cloud platform ? Embedded with assessments that will help you revise the concepts you have learned in this book Who This Book Is For This book is aimed at Java developers who knows the basics of Spring programming and want to build microservices with Spring Boot. What You Will Learn ? Use Spring Initializr to create a basic spring project ? Build a basic microservice with Spring Boot ? Implement caching and exception handling ? Secure your microservice with Spring security and OAuth2 ? Deploy microservices using self-contained HTTP server ? Monitor your microservices with Spring Boot actuator ? Learn to develop more effectively with developer tools In Detail Microservices helps in decomposing applications into small services and move away from a single monolithic artifact. It helps in building systems that are scalable, flexible, and high resilient. Spring Boot helps in building REST-oriented, production-grade microservices. This book is a quick learning guide on how to build, monitor, and deploy microservices with Spring Boot. You'll be first familiarized with Spring Boot before delving into building microservices. You will learn how to document your microservice with the help of Spring REST docs and Swagger documentation. You will then learn how to secure your microservice with Spring Security and OAuth2. You will deploy your app using a self-contained HTTP server and also learn to monitor a microservice with the help of Spring Boot actuator. This book is ideal for Java developers who knows the basics of Spring programming and want to build microservices with Spring Boot. This book is embedded with useful assessments that will help you revise the concepts you have learned in this book. Style and approach This book follows a practical approach to teach you how to build, monitor, and deploy microservices with Spring Boot. Note: This book is a blend of text and quizzes, all packaged up keeping your journey in mind. It includes content from the following Packt product: ? Mastering Spring 5.0 by Ranga Rao Karanam

Build smarter and efficient database application systems for your organization with SQL Server 2017 About This Book ? Build database applications by using the development features of SQL Server 2017 ? Work with temporal tables to get information stored in a table at any time ? Use adaptive querying to enhance the performance of your queries Who This Book Is For Database developers and solution architects looking to design efficient database applications using SQL Server 2017 will find this book very useful. In addition, this book will be valuable to advanced analysis practitioners and business intelligence developers. Database consultants dealing with performance tuning will get a lot of useful information from this book as well. Some basic understanding of database concepts and T-SQL is required to get the best out of this book. What You Will Learn ? Explore the new development features introduced in SQL Server 2017 ? Identify opportunities for In-Memory OLTP technology ? Use columnstore indexes to get storage and performance improvements ? Exchange JSON data between applications and SQL Server ? Use the new security features to encrypt or mask the data ? Control the access to the data on the row levels ? Discover the potential of R and Python integration ? Model complex relationships with the graph databases in SQL Server 2017 In Detail Microsoft SQL Server 2017 is the next big step in the data platform history of Microsoft as it brings in the power of R and Python for machine learning and containerization-based deployment on Windows and Linux. Compared to its predecessor, SQL Server 2017 has evolved into Machine Learning with R services for statistical analysis and Python packages for analytical processing. This book prepares you for more advanced topics by starting with a quick introduction to SQL Server 2017’s new features and a recapitulation of the possibilities you may have already explored with previous versions of SQL Server. The next part introduces you to enhancements in the Transact-SQL language and new database engine capabilities and then switches to a completely new technology inside SQL Server: JSON support. We also take a look at the Stretch database, security enhancements, and temporal tables. Furthermore, the book focuses on implementing advanced topics, including Query Store, columnstore indexes, and In-Memory OLTP. Towards the end of the book, you’ll be introduced to R and how to use the R language with Transact-SQL for data exploration and analysis. You’ll also learn to integrate Python code in SQL Server and graph database implementations along with deployment options on Linux and SQL Server in containers for development and testing. By the end of this book, you will have the required information to design efficient, high-performance database applications without any hassle. Style and approach This book is a detailed guide to mastering the development features offered by SQL Server 2017, with a unique learn-as-you-do approach. All the concepts are explained in a very easy-to-understand manner and are supplemented with examples to ensure that you—the developer—are able to take that next step in building more powerful, robust applications for your organization with ease.

Build cross-platform solutions with .NET Core 2.0 through real-life scenarios About This Book ? Bridges the gap between learning and doing and improves your software development skills ? Covers the best practices of .NET development to improve your productivity ? Example-based approach to get you started quickly with software programming Who This Book Is For If you are a developer or architect and want to learn how to build cross-platform solutions using Microsoft .NET Core, this book is for you. It is assumed that you have some knowledge of the .NET Framework, OOP, and C# (or a similar programming language). What You Will Learn ? Build cross-platform applications with ASP.NET Core 2.0 and its tools ? Integrate, host, and deploy web apps with the cloud (Microsoft Azure) ? Leverage the ncurses native library to extend console capabilities in .NET Core on Linux and interop with native coden .NET Core on Linux and learn how to interop with existing native code ? Reuse existing .NET Framework and Mono assemblies from .NET Core 2.0 applications ? Develop real-time web applications using ASP.NET Core ? Learn the differences between SOA and microservices and get started with microservice development using ASP.NET Core 2.0 ? Walk through functional programming with F# and .NET Core from scratch In Detail With the rise in the number of tools and technologies available today, developers and architects are always exploring ways to create better and smarter solutions. Before, the differences between target platforms was a major roadblock, but that's not the case now. .NET Core 2.0 By Example will take you on an exciting journey to building better software. This book provides fresh and relevant content to .NET Core 2.0 in a succinct format that’s enjoyable to read. It also delivers concepts, along with the implications, design decisions, and potential pitfalls you might face when targeting Linux and Windows systems, in a logical and simple way. With the .NET framework at its center, the book comprises of five varied projects: a multiplayer Tic-tac-toe game; a real-time chat application, Let'sChat; a chatbot; a microservice-based buying-selling application; and a movie booking application. You will start each chapter with a high-level overview of the content, followed by the above example applications described in detail. By the end of each chapter, you will not only be proficient with the concepts, but you’ll also have created a tangible component in the application. By the end of the book, you will have built five solid projects using all the tools and support provided by the .NET Core 2.0 framework. Style and approach This book takes a concise yet comprehensive project-based approach to teaching the tricks and tools of .NET Core 2.0.

Get command of your organizational Big Data using the power of data science and analytics About This Book ? A perfect companion to boost your Big Data storing, processing, analyzing skills to help you take informed business decisions ? Work with the best tools such as Apache Hadoop, R, Python, and Spark for NoSQL platforms to perform massive online analyses ? Get expert tips on statistical inference, machine learning, mathematical modeling, and data visualization for Big Data Who This Book Is For The book is intended for existing and aspiring Big Data professionals who wish to become the go-to person in their organization when it comes to Big Data architecture, analytics, and governance. While no prior knowledge of Big Data or related technologies is assumed, it will be helpful to have some programming experience. What You Will Learn ? Get a 360-degree view into the world of Big Data, data science and machine learning ? Broad range of technical and business Big Data analytics topics that caters to the interests of the technical experts as well as corporate IT executives ? Get hands-on experience with industry-standard Big Data and machine learning tools such as Hadoop, Spark, MongoDB, KDB+ and R ? Create production-grade machine learning BI Dashboards using R and R Shiny with step-by-step instructions ? Learn how to combine open-source Big Data, machine learning and BI Tools to create low-cost business analytics applications ? Understand corporate strategies for successful Big Data and data science projects ? Go beyond general-purpose analytics to develop cutting-edge Big Data applications using emerging technologies In Detail Big Data analytics relates to the strategies used by organizations to collect, organize and analyze large amounts of data to uncover valuable business insights that otherwise cannot be analyzed through traditional systems. Crafting an enterprise-scale cost-efficient Big Data and machine learning solution to uncover insights and value from your organization's data is a challenge. Today, with hundreds of new Big Data systems, machine learning packages and BI Tools, selecting the right combination of technologies is an even greater challenge. This book will help you do that. With the help of this guide, you will be able to bridge the gap between the theoretical world of technology with the practical ground reality of building corporate Big Data and data science platforms. You will get hands-on exposure to Hadoop and Spark, build machine learning dashboards using R and R Shiny, create web-based apps using NoSQL databases such as MongoDB and even learn how to write R code for neural networks. By the end of the book, you will have a very clear and concrete understanding of what Big Data analytics means, how it drives revenues for organizations, and how you can develop your own Big Data analytics solution using different tools and methods articulated in this book. Style and approach This book equips you with a knowledge of various NoSQL tools, R, Python programming, cloud platforms, and techniques so you can use them to store, analyze, and deliver meaningful insights from your data.

Learn the techniques for object recognition, 3D reconstruction, stereo imaging, and other computer vision applications using examples on different functions of OpenCV. About This Book ? Learn how to apply complex visual effects to images with OpenCV 3.x and Python ? Extract features from an image and use them to develop advanced applications ? Build algorithms to help you understand image content and perform visual searches ? Get to grips with advanced techniques in OpenCV such as machine learning, artificial neural network, 3D reconstruction, and augmented reality Who This Book Is For This book is intended for Python developers who are new to OpenCV and want to develop computer vision applications with OpenCV and Python. This book is also useful for generic software developers who want to deploy computer vision applications on the cloud. It would be helpful to have some familiarity with basic mathematical concepts such as vectors, matrices, and so on. What You Will Learn ? Detect shapes and edges from images and videos ? How to apply filters on images and videos ? Use different techniques to manipulate and improve images ? Extract and manipulate particular parts of images and videos ? Track objects or colors from videos ? Recognize specific object or faces from images and videos ? How to create Augmented Reality applications ? Apply artificial neural networks and machine learning to improve object recognition In Detail Computer vision is found everywhere in modern technology. OpenCV for Python enables us to run computer vision algorithms in real time. With the advent of powerful machines, we have more processing power to work with. Using this technology, we can seamlessly integrate our computer vision applications into the cloud. Focusing on OpenCV 3.x and Python 3.6, this book will walk you through all the building blocks needed to build amazing computer vision applications with ease. We start off by manipulating images using simple filtering and geometric transformations. We then discuss affine and projective transformations and see how we can use them to apply cool advanced manipulations to your photos like resizing them while keeping the content intact or smoothly removing undesired elements. We will then cover techniques of object tracking, body part recognition, and object recognition using advanced techniques of machine learning such as artificial neural network. 3D reconstruction and augmented reality techniques are also included. The book covers popular OpenCV libraries with the help of examples. This book is a practical tutorial that covers various examples at different levels, teaching you about the different functions of OpenCV and their actual implementation. By the end of this book, you will have acquired the skills to use OpenCV and Python to develop real-world computer vision applications. Style and approach The book is a practical tutorial that covers various examples at different levels, teaching you about the different functions of OpenCV and their actual implementation.

Bring realism to your games by mastering post-processing effects and advanced shading techniques in Unity 2018 About This Book ? Learn the secrets of creating AAA quality shaders without writing long algorithms ? Master shader programming through easy-to-follow examples ? Create stunning visual effects that can be used in 3D games Who This Book Is For Unity Shaders and Effects Cookbook is for developers who want to create their first shaders in Unity 2018 or wish to take their game to a whole new level by adding professional post-processing effects. A solid understanding of Unity is required to get the most from this book. What You Will Learn ? Understand physically based rendering to fit the aesthetic of your game ? Write shaders from scratch in ShaderLab and HLSL/Cg ? Combine shader programming with interactive scripts to add life to your materials ? Design efficient shaders for mobile platforms without sacrificing their realism ? Use state-of-the-art techniques, such as volumetric explosions and fur shading ? Master the math and algorithms behind the most used lighting models ? Understand how shader models have evolved and how you can create your own In Detail Since their introduction to Unity, shaders have been seen as notoriously difficult to understand and implement in games. Complex mathematics has always stood in the way of creating your own shaders and attaining the level of realism you crave. Unity 2018 Shaders and Effects Cookbook changes that by giving you a recipe-based guide to creating shaders using Unity. It will show you everything you need to know about vectors, how lighting is constructed with them, and how textures are used to create complex effects without the heavy math. This book starts by teaching you how to use shaders without writing code with the post-processing stack. Then, you’ll learn how to write shaders from scratch, build up essential lighting, and finish by creating stunning screen effects just like those in high-quality 3D and mobile games. You'll discover techniques, such as normal mapping, image-based lighting, and animating your models inside a shader. We'll explore how to use physically based rendering to treat light the way it behaves in the real world. At the end, we’ll even look at Unity 2018’s new Shader Graph system. With this book, what seems like a dark art today will be second nature by tomorrow. Style and approach The recipes in this book contain step-by-step instructions, complemented with screenshots, code, and real-world examples.

Enterprise Agility is practical framework for enhancing Agility and equipping your company with the tools to survive. About This Book ? Prepare your company to navigate the rapidly-moving business world ? Enhance Agility in every component of your organization ? Build a framework that meets the unique requirements of your enterprise Who This Book Is For Enterprise Agility is a tool for anyone with the motivation to influence outcomes in an enterprise, who aspires to improve Agility. Readers from the following backgrounds will benefit: chief executive officer, chief information officer, people/human resource director, information technology director, head of change program, head of transformation, and Agile coach/consultant. What You Will Learn ? Drive agility-oriented change across the enterprise ? Understand why agility matters (more than ever) to modern enterprises ? Adopt and influence an Agile mindset in your teams and in your organization ? Understand the concept of a CAS and how to model enterprise and leadership behaviors on CAS characteristics to enhance enterprise agility ? Understand and convey the differences between Agile and true enterprise agility ? Create an enterprise-specific action plan to enhance agility ? Become a champion for enterprise agility ? Recognize the advantages and challenges of distributed teams, and how Agile ways of working can remedy the rough spots ? Enable and motivate your IT partners to adopt Agile ways of working In Detail The biggest challenge enterprises face today is dealing with fast-paced change in all spheres of business. Enterprise Agility shows how an enterprise can address this challenge head on and thrive in the dynamic environment. Avoiding the mechanistic construction of existing enterprises that focus on predictability and certainty, Enterprise Agility delivers practical advice for responding and adapting to the scale and accelerating pace of disruptive change in the business environment. Agility is a fundamental shift in thinking about how enterprises work to effectively deal with disruptive changes in the business environment. The core belief underlying agility is that enterprises are open and living systems. These living systems, also known as complex adaptive systems (CAS), are ideally suited to deal with change very effectively. Agility is to enterprises what health is to humans. There are some foundational principles that can be broadly applied, but the definition of healthy is very specific to each individual. Enterprise Agility takes a similar approach with regard to agility: it suggests foundational practices to improve the overall health of the body—culture, mindset, and leadership—and the health of its various organs: people, process, governance, structure, technology, and customers. The book also suggests a practical framework to create a plan to enhance agility. Style and approach Enterprise Agility is a step-by-step guide to facing change and uncertainty head-on. The books provides practical ways to apply Agile methodologies and boost Agility throughout a business.

Make web applications run faster by using advanced PHP, SQL and JavaScript techniques About This Book ? Use a customized PHP stack to create efficient data-driven web applications ? Ensure seamless implementation of a JavaScript & HTML 5 CSS based frontend and PHP based backend. ? Learn about problem identification, best strategies, and UI design patterns as well to build a clean, fast web application Who This Book Is For The audience for this book would be PHP developers who have some basic knowledge of PHP programming and Web technologies. JavaScript programming knowledge is not necessary. What You Will Learn ? Install, confgure, and use profling and benchmarking testing tools ? Understand how to recognize optimizable data structures and functions to effectively optimize a PHP7 application ? Diagnose bad SQL query performance and discover ways to optimize it ? Grasp modern SQL techniques to optimize complex SQL queries ? Identify and simplify overly complex JavaScript code ? Explore and implement UI design principles that effectively enhance the performance ? Combine web technologies to boost web server performance In Detail This book will get you started with the latest benchmarking, profiling and monitoring tools for PHP, MySQL and JavaScript using Docker-based technologies. From optimizing PHP 7 code to learning asynchronous programming, from implementing Modern SQL solutions to discovering Functional JavaScript techniques, this book covers all the latest developments in Faster Web technologies. You will not only learn to determine the best optimization strategies, but also how to implement them. Along the way, you will learn how to profile your PHP scripts with Blackfire.io, monitor your Web applications, measure database performance, optimize SQL queries, explore Functional JavaScript, boost Web server performance in general and optimize applications when there is nothing left to optimize by going beyond performance. After reading this book, you will know how to boost the performance of any Web application and make it part of what has come to be known as the Faster Web. Style and approach The book has a step by step practical approach to developing highly efficient Web applications, with many practical and useful code snippets.

Develop rich and scalable web applications with Node.js, Express.js, and MongoDB About This Book ? Learn the advanced features of Aurelia to build responsive web applications ? Write clean, modular, and testable code that will be easy to maintain and evolve ? Harness the power of JavaScript on the client and server side to build full-stack applications Who This Book Is For Hands-On Full Stack Web Development with Aurelia is for you if you are a web or full-stack JavaScript developer who has experience with traditional stacks such as LAMP, MEAN, or MERN and wish to explore the power of Aurelia and new stack with modern web technologies. What You Will Learn ? Employ best practices and modern approaches to create frontend applications ? Learn about modern CSS preprocessors and improve the readability of your application ? Use the Aurelia framework to create navigable web applications ? Write your own tests, making your application secure and fault-tolerant ? Create solid RESTful APIs using the microservice architecture ? Understand the NoSQL paradigm and get the best performance from your database ? Integrate third-party libraries such as Gmail for Single Sign On ? Write UI testing scripts and integration tests to build extensible apps In Detail Hands-On Full Stack Web Development with Aurelia begins with a review of basic JavaScript concepts and the structure of an Aurelia application generated with the Aurelia-CLI tool. You will learn how to create interesting and intuitive application using the Aurelia-Materialize plugin, which implements the material design approach. Once you fully configure a FIFA World Cup 2018 app, you'll start creating the initial components through TDD practices and then develop backend services to process and store all the user data. This book lets you explore the NoSQL model and implement it using one of the most popular NoSQL databases, MongoDB, with some exciting libraries to make the experience effortless. You'll also be able to add some advanced behavior to your components, from managing the lifecycle properly to using dynamic binding, field validations, and the custom service layer. You will integrate your application with Google OAuth Service and learn best practices to secure your applications. Furthermore, you'll write UI Testing scripts to create high-quality Aurelia Apps and explore the most used tools to run end-to-end tests. In the concluding chapters, you'll be able to deploy your application to the Cloud and Docker containers. By the end of this book, you will have learned how to create rich applications using best practices and modern approaches. Style and approach This is a comprehensive example-based book that guides you to create highly scalable applications using the new MEAN Stack.

Make the most of Kotlin by leveraging design patterns and best practices to build scalable and high performing apps About This Book ? Understand traditional GOF design patterns to apply generic solutions ? Shift from OOP to FP; covering reactive and concurrent patterns in a step-by-step manner ? Choose the best microservices architecture and MVC for your development environment Who This Book Is For This book is for developers who would like to master design patterns with Kotlin to build efficient and scalable applications. Basic Java or Kotlin programming knowledge is assumed What You Will Learn ? Get to grips with Kotlin principles, including its strengths and weaknesses ? Understand classical design patterns in Kotlin ? Explore functional programming using built-in features of Kotlin ? Solve real-world problems using reactive and concurrent design patterns ? Use threads and coroutines to simplify concurrent code flow ? Understand antipatterns to write clean Kotlin code, avoiding common pitfalls ? Learn about the design considerations necessary while choosing between architectures In Detail Design patterns enable you as a developer to speed up the development process by providing you with proven development paradigms. Reusing design patterns helps prevent complex issues that can cause major problems, improves your code base, promotes code reuse, and makes an architecture more robust. The mission of this book is to ease the adoption of design patterns in Kotlin and provide good practices for programmers. The book begins by showing you the practical aspects of smarter coding in Kotlin, explaining the basic Kotlin syntax and the impact of design patterns. From there, the book provides an in-depth explanation of the classical design patterns of creational, structural, and behavioral families, before heading into functional programming. It then takes you through reactive and concurrent patterns, teaching you about using streams, threads, and coroutines to write better code along the way By the end of the book, you will be able to efficiently address common problems faced while developing applications and be comfortable working on scalable and maintainable projects of any size. Style and approach This book explains design patterns in a step-by-step manner with clear and concise code examples