Digital library
Textbooks, references and open learning resources.
External
Introduction to Data Science Using Python
Afrand Agah · The Pennsylvania Alliance for Design of Open Textbooks (PA-ADOPT) · 2024
This book contains two parts, the first is designed to be used in an introductory programming course for students looking to learn Python, without having any prior experience with programming. Basic programming concepts are discussed, explained, and illustrated with a Python program. Ample programming questions are provided for practice. The second part of the book utilizes machine-learning concepts and statistics to accomplish data-driven resolutions. Python programs are provided to apply scientific computing to conclude statistically driven results.
External
Building User Interfaces for Modern Web Applications: React Programming
Cheer-Sun Yang · The Pennsylvania Alliance for Design of Open Textbooks (PA-ADOPT) · 2024
Since Facebook released React as an open-source software library for front-end programming in 2013, React has gain popularity quickly. Although there are other frameworks or libraries, React is considered a programmer-friendly JavaScript library using the functional programming approach for the front-end web application development. Teaching and learning React can provide training in Functional Programming, Software Engineering Principles, and the Event-Driven Programming Paradigm. The ultimate goal of this eTextbook is to provide a timely support for teaching the state-of-the-art technology as the React ecosystem evolves. In this eTextbook, the prerequisite concepts about HTML/CSS, JavaScript, and Bootstrap/React-Bootstrap are introduced first, followed by the main React language features. Finally, the Software Engineering Principles are introduced from the design, development, to debugging and maintenance. The main objectives are threefold: (1) provide concepts about JavaScript Programming, (2) introduce the concepts of modularity, functional programming, and (3) teach the concept of reusable User Interface (UI) as the front-end of modern model-view-controller (MVC) web applications. Although learning other technologies in the React ecosystem is imminent, it is the hope that this book paves the groundwork for the future learning and growing in the field of modern UI development.
External
Handbook of Software Engineering Methods
Lara Letaw · Oregon State University · 2024
Software engineering can help people create sustainable, extensible programs that solve problems people care about.I won’t tell you how to be a software engineer; you’ll learn that over time by doing it. Instead, this book is about software engineering methods: Ways people achieve specific objectives in software engineering—that can save your project. My hope is that, after reading this book (or parts of it), you’ll feel better equipped for software engineering.
External
Programming Persistent Memory: A Comprehensive Guide for Developers
Stteve Scargall · Apress · 2020
Beginning and experienced programmers will use this comprehensive guide to persistent memory programming. You will understand how persistent memory brings together several new software/hardware requirements, and offers great promise for better performance and faster application startup times—a huge leap forward in byte-addressable capacity compared with current DRAM offerings. This revolutionary new technology gives applications significant performance and capacity improvements over existing technologies. It requires a new way of thinking and developing, which makes this highly disruptive to the IT/computing industry. The full spectrum of industry sectors that will benefit from this technology include, but are not limited to, in-memory and traditional databases, AI, analytics, HPC, virtualization, and big data. Programming Persistent Memory describes the technology and why it is exciting the industry. It covers the operating system and hardware requirements as well as how to create development environments using emulated or real persistent memory hardware. The book explains fundamental concepts; provides an introduction to persistent memory programming APIs for C, C++, JavaScript, and other languages; discusses RMDA with persistent memory; reviews security features; and presents many examples. Source code and examples that you can run on your own systems are included. What You’ll Learn Understand what persistent memory is, what it does, and the value it brings to the industry Become familiar with the operating system and hardware requirements to use persistent memory Know the fundamentals of persistent memory programming: why it is different from current programming methods, and what developers need to keep in mind when programming for persistence Look at persistent memory application development by example using the Persistent Memory Development Kit (PMDK) Design and optimize data structures for persistent memory Study how real-world applications are modified to le
External
Patterns for Beginning Programmers
David Bernstein · James Madison University · 2022
Programming patterns are solutions to problems that require the creation of a small fragment of code that will be part of a larger program. Hence, this book is about teaching you how to write such fragments of code. However, it is not about teaching you the syntax of the statements in the fragments, it assumes that you already know the syntax. Instead, it is about finding solutions to problems that arise when first learning to program.
External
Evidence-based Software Engineering
Derek Jones · Knowledge Software · 2020
This book discusses what is currently known about software engineering, based on an analysis of all the publicly available data. This aim is not as ambitious as it sounds, because there is not a great deal of data publicly available. The intent is to provide material that is useful to professional developers working in industry; until recently researchers in software engineering have been more interested in vanity work, promoted by ego and bluster. The material is organized in two parts, the first covering software engineering and the second the statistics likely to be needed for the analysis of software engineering data.
External
Introduction to Statistical Thinking
Benjamin Yakir · Benjamin Yakir · 2010
The target audience for this book is college students who are required to learn statistics, students with little background in mathematics and often no motivation to learn more. It is assumed that the students do have basic skills in using computers and have access to one. Moreover, it is assumed that the students are willing to actively follow the discussion in the text, to practice, and more importantly, to think. Teaching statistics is a challenge. Teaching it to students who are required to learn the subject as part of their curriculum, is an art mastered by few. In the past I have tried to master this art and failed. In desperation, I wrote this book. This book uses the basic structure of generic introduction to statistics course. However, in some ways I have chosen to diverge from the traditional approach. One divergence is the introduction of R as part of the learning process. Many have used statistical packages or spreadsheets as tools for teaching statistics. Others have used R in advanced courses. I am not aware of attempts to use R in introductory level courses. Indeed, mastering R requires much investment of time and energy that may be distracting and counterproductive for learning more fundamental issues. Yet, I believe that if one restricts the application of R to a limited number of commands, the benefits that R provides outweigh the difficulties that R engenders. Another departure from the standard approach is the treatment of probability as part of the course. In this book I do not attempt to teach probability as a subject matter, but only specific elements of it which I feel are essential for understanding statistics. Hence, Kolmogorov’s Axioms are out as well as attempts to prove basic theorems and a Balls and Urns type of discussion. On the other hand, emphasis is given to the notion of a random variable and, in that context, the sample space.
External
Computer Science I
Chris Bourke · Chris Bourke · 2018
This textbook covers the traditional introductory Computer Science I topics but takes a unique approach. Topics are covered in a language-agnostic manner in the first part with supplemental parts that cover the same concepts in a specific language. The current version covers C, Java, and PHP. This textbook as been used in several Computer Science I sections over multiple years at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln
External
Defend Dissent
Glencora Borradaile · Oregon State University · 2021
Defend Dissent is an introduction to cryptography paired with the social impacts of surveillance and the protective potential of encryption, with a focus on US social movements. Each chapter ends with a story that brings social context to the material—from surveillance used against contemporary US protests to the African National Congress’s use of partially manual encryption in fighting apartheid in South Africa in the 80s.This book can be read linearly, or you can pick and choose what you would like to learn about. Each chapter is prefaced with what you should read first (for background) and concludes with what you might want to read next.
External
A Person-Centered Guide to Demystifying Technology: Working together to observe, question, design, prototype, and implement/reject technology in support of people's valued beings and doings
Martin Wolske · University of Illinois Library - Urbana · 2023
Digital technologies old and new are not objects that can be packed inside a box. They are a seamless, indivisible combination of people, organizations, policies, economies, histories, cultures, knowledge, and material things that are continuously shaped and reshaped. Every one of us innovates-in-use our everyday technologies; we just do not always know it. We are shaped by the networked information tools in our midst, and we shape them and thereby shape others. While many of the chapters in this book can be approached as standalone explorations, as many around the world have done, its full potential comes when collaboratively taken as a journey through twelve sessions. Each session in this second, revised edition includes two thematically linked chapters, one more socially oriented and one more technically oriented. Sessions are brought together into three larger generative themes that are built from three decades of participatory design in and with community, and from the teaching of these concepts and practices in courses and workshops. Approached within a community of practice, learning outcomes include discovering ways to advance power, both power within and power with others; advancing our technical skills, but also and even more, our progressive community engagement skills, our critical sociotechnical skills, and our cognitive, information, and social-emotional skills; and progressing our culturally competent collective leadership through social justice storytelling within a framing of reciprocity. In so doing, this textbook seeks to address the call placed by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. – to rapidly shift from a ‘thing-oriented’ society to a ‘person-oriented’ society.
External
Think Raku: How to Think Like a Computer Scientist
Laurent Rosenfeld; Allen Downey · Green Tea Press · 2017
The title of this book was originally Think Perl 6, but since Perl 6 has been renamed Raku, we have also changed the title of the book. Think Raku is an introduction to computer science and programming intended for people with little or no experience. This aim of this book is not primarily to teach Raku, but instead to teach the art of programming, using the Raku language. After having completed this book, you should hopefully be able to write programs to solve relatively difficult problems in Raku, but my main aim is to teach computer science, software programming, and problem solving rather than solely to teach the Raku language itself. Think Raku is a free book available under a Creative Commons license. Readers are free to copy and distribute the text; they are also free to modify it, which allows them to adapt the book to different needs, and to help develop new material.
External
A Primer for Computational Biology
Shawn O'Neil · Oregon State University · 2017
A Primer for Computational Biology aims to provide life scientists and students the skills necessary for research in a data-rich world. The text covers accessing and using remote servers via the command-line, writing programs and pipelines for data analysis, and provides useful vocabulary for interdisciplinary work. The book is broken into three parts: Introduction to Unix/Linux: The command-line is the “natural environment” of scientific computing, and this part covers a wide range of topics, including logging in, working with files and directories, installing programs and writing scripts, and the powerful “pipe” operator for file and data manipulation. Programming in Python: Python is both a premier language for learning and a common choice in scientific software development. This part covers the basic concepts in programming (data types, if-statements and loops, functions) via examples of DNA-sequence analysis. This part also covers more complex subjects in software development such as objects and classes, modules, and APIs. Programming in R: The R language specializes in statistical data analysis, and is also quite useful for visualizing large datasets. This third part covers the basics of R as a programming language (data types, if-statements, functions, loops and when to use them) as well as techniques for large-scale, multi-test analyses. Other topics include S3 classes and data visualization with ggplot2.
External
A First Course in Electrical and Computer Engineering
Louis Scharf · OpenStax CNX · 2009
This book was written for an experimental freshman course at the University of Colorado. The course is now an elective that the majority of our electrical and computer engineering students take in the second semester of their freshman year, just before their first circuits course. Our department decided to offer this course for several reasons: we wanted to pique student' interest in engineering by acquainting them with engineering teachers early in their university careers and by providing with exposure to the types of problems that electrical and computer engineers are asked to solve; we wanted students entering the electrical and computer engineering programs to be prepared in complex analysis, phasors, and linear algebra, topics that are of fundamental importance in our discipline; we wanted students to have an introduction to a software application tool, such as MATLAB, to complete their preparation for practical and efficient computing in their subsequent courses and in their professional careers; we wanted students to make early contact with advanced topics like vector graphics, filtering, and binary coding so that they would gain a more rounded picture of modern electrical and computer engineering. In order to introduce this course, we had to sacrifice a second semester of Pascal programming. We concluded that the sacrifice was worth making because we found that most of our students were prepared for high-level language computing after just one semester of programming. We believe engineering educators elsewhere are reaching similar conclusions about their own students and curriculums. We hope this book helps create a much needed dialogue about curriculum revision and that it leads to the development of similar introductory courses that encourage students to enter and practice our craft.Students electing to take this course have completed one semester of calculus, computer programming, chemistry, and humanities. Concurrently with this course, students take ph
External
Making Games with Python & Pygame
Al Sweigart · Albert Sweigart · 2012
This book will teach you how to make graphical computer games in the Python programming language using the Pygame library.This book assumes you know a little bit about Python or programming in general. If you don’t know how to program, you can learn by downloading the free book "Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python" from http://inventwithpython.com. Or you can jump right into this book and mostly pick it up along the way. This book is for the intermediate programmer who has learned what variables and loops are, but now wants to know, "What do actual game programs look like?" There was a long gap after I first learned programming but didn’t really know how to use that skill to make something cool. It’s my hope that the games in this book will give you enough ideas about how programs work to provide a foundation to implement your own games.
External
Delftse Foundations of Computation
Stefan Hugtenburg; Neil Yorke-Smith · TU Delft Open · 2022
DELFTSE FOUNDATIONS OF COMPUTATION is a textbook for a one-quarter introductory course in theoretical computer science. It includes top-ics from propositional and predicate logic, proof techniques, discrete structures, set theory and the theory of computation, along with practical applications to computer science. It has no prerequisites other than a general familiarity with computer programming. This book is derived from Foundations of Computation by Carol Critchlow and David Eck, Version 2.3 (Summer 2011), which is licensed under CC BYNC-SA 4.0. Critchlow and Eck are not associated with the TU Delft editions. This book also uses some material from Wikipedia (English) (en.wikipedia. org), which is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0. The authors of the TU Delft editions are responsible for any errors, and welcome bug reports and suggestions by email or in person. Thanks to M. de Jong, T. Klos, I. van Kreveld, F. Mulder, H. Tonino, E. Walraven, and all students who reported bugs or provided exercise solutions. This work can be redistributed in unmodified form, or in modified form with proper attribution and under the same licence as the original, for noncommercial uses only, as specified by the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Licence (creativecommons.org/licenses/by-ncsa/4.0/).
External
Think Data Structures: Algorithms and Information Retrieval in Java
Allen Downey · Green Tea Press · 2016
Data structures and algorithms are among the most important inventions of the last 50 years, and they are fundamental tools software engineers need to know. But in my opinion, most of the books on these topics are too theoretical, too big, and too bottom-up: Too theoretical: Mathematical analysis of algorithms is based on simplifying assumptions that limit its usefulness in practice. Many presentations of this topic gloss over the simplifications and focus on the math. In this book I present the most practical subset of this material and eliminate the rest. Too big: Most books on these topics are at least 500 pages, and some are more than 1000. By focusing on the topics I think are most useful for software engineers, I kept this book under 250 pages. Too bottom-up: Many data structures books focus on how data structures work (the implementations), with less about how to use them (the interfaces). In this book, I go “top down”, starting with the interfaces. Readers learn to use the structures in the Java Collections Framework before getting into the details of how they work. Finally, many present this material out of context and without motivation: it’s just one damn data structure after another! I try to alleviate the boredom by organizing the topics around an application—web search—that uses data structures extensively, and is an interesting and important topic in its own right. This application also motivates some topics that are not usually covered in an introductory data structures class, including persistent data structures, with Redis, and streaming algorithms. This book also presents basic aspects of software engineering practice, including version control and unit testing. Each chapter ends with an exercise that allows readers to apply what they have learned. Each exercise includes automated tests that check the solution. And for most exercises, I present my solution at the beginning of the next chapter. This book is intended for college students in computer
External
Object-Oriented Reengineering Patterns
Serge Demeyer; Stéphane Ducasse; Oscar Nierstrasz · Stéphane Ducasse · 2008
The documentation is missing or obsolete, and the original developers have departed. Your team has limited understanding of the system, and unit tests are missing for many, if not all, of the components. When you fix a bug in one place, another bug pops up somewhere else in the system. Long rebuild times make any change difficult. All of these are signs of software that is close to the breaking point. Many systems can be upgraded or simply thrown away if they no longer serve their purpose. Legacy software, however, is crucial for operations and needs to be continually available and upgraded. How can you reduce the complexity of a legacy system sufficiently so that it can continue to be used and adapted at acceptable cost? Based on the authors' industrial experiences, this book is a guide on how to reverse engineer legacy systems to understand their problems, and then reengineer those systems to meet new demands. Patterns are used to clarify and explain the process of understanding large code bases, hence transforming them to meet new requirements. The key insight is that the right design and organization of your system is not something that can be evident from the initial requirements alone, but rather as a consequence of understanding how these requirements evolve.
External
Implementing a One Address CPU in Logisim
Charles Kann · A.T. Still University · 2016
Most computer users have an incorrect, but useful, cognitive metaphor for computers in which the user says (or types or clicks) something and a mystical, almost intelligent or magical, behavior happens. It is not a stretch to describe computer users as believing computers follow the laws of magic, where some magic incantation is entered, and the computer responds with an expected, but magical, behavior. This magic computer does not actually exist. In reality computer are machines, and every action a computer performs reduces to a set of mechanical operations. In fact the first complete definition of a working computer was a mechanical machine designed by Charles Babbage in 1834, and would have run on steam power. Probably the biggest success of Computer Science (CS) in the 20th century was the development of abstractions that hide the mechanical nature of computers. The fact that average people use computers without ever considering that they are mechanistic is a triumph of CS designers. This purpose of this monograph is to break the abstract understanding of a computer, and to explain a computer's behavior in completely in mechanistic terms. It will deal specifically with the Central Processing Unit (CPU) of the computer, as this is where the magic happens. All other parts of a computer can be seen as just providing information for the CPU to operate on. This monograph will deal with a specific type of CPU, a one-address CPU, and will explain this CPU using only standard gates, specifically AND, OR, NOT, NAND and XOR gates, and 4 basic Integrated Circuits (ICs), the Decoder, Multiplexer, Adder, and Flip Flop. All of these gates and components can be described as mechanical transformations of input data to output data, and the overall CPU can then be seen as a mechanical device.
External
High Performance Computing
Charles Severance; Kevin Dowd · OpenStax CNX · 2010
The purpose of this book is to teach new programmers and scientists about the basics of High Performance Computing. Too many parallel and high performance computing books focus on the architecture, theory and computer science surrounding HPC. This book speaks to the practicing chemistry student, physicist, or biologist who need to write and run their programs as part of their research.
External
Enterprise Pharo a Web Perspective
Square Bracket Associates · 2016
Enterprise Pharo is the third volume of the series, following Pharo by Example and Deep into Pharo. It covers enterprise libraries and frameworks, and in particular those useful for doing web development. The book is structured in five parts. The first part talks about simple web applications, starting with a minimal web application in chapter 1 on Teapot and then a tutorial on building a more complete web application in chapter 2. Part two deals with HTTP support in Pharo, talking about character encoding in chapter 3, about using Pharo as an HTTP Client (chapter 4) and server (chapter 5), and about using WebSockets (chapter 6).In the third part we discuss the handling of data for the application. Firstly we treat data that is in the form of comma-separated values (CSV) in chapter 7. Secondly and thirdly, we treat JSON (chapter 8) and its Smalltalk counterpart STON (chapter 9). Fourthly, serialization and deserialization of object graphs with Fuel is treated in chapter 10. Lastly, we discuss the Voyage persistence framework and persisting to MongoDB databases in chapter 11. Part four deals with the presentation layer. Chapter 12 shows how to use Mustache templates in Pharo, and chapter 13 talks about programmatic generationof CSS files. The documentation of applications could be written in Pillar, which is presented in chapter 14. How to generate PDF files from the application with Artefact is shown in chapter 15. The fifth part deals with deploying the web application. This is explained in chapter 16 that talks not only about how to build and run the application, but also other important topics like monitoring.