Recommendations based on "Balancing Work and Life"

Even bad code can function. But if code isn't clean, it can bring a development organization to its knees. Every year, countless hours and significant resources are lost because of poorly written code. But it doesn't have to be that way.Noted software expert Robert C. Martin, presents a revolutionary paradigm with Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship. Martin, who has helped bring agile principles from a practitioner's point of view to tens of thousands of programmers, has teamed up with his colleagues from Object Mentor to distill their best agile practice of cleaning code on the fly into a book that will instill within you the values of software craftsman, and make you a better programmerbut only if you work at it.What kind of work will you be doing? You'll be reading codelots of code. And you will be challenged to think about what's right about that code, and what's wrong with it. More importantly you will be challenged to reassess your professional values and your commitment to your craft.  Clean Code is divided into three parts. The first describes the principles, patterns, and practices of writing clean code. The second part consists of several case studies of increasing complexity. Each case study is an exercise in cleaning up codeof transforming a code base that has some problems into one that is sound and efficient. The third part is the payoff: a single chapter containing a list of heuristics and smells gathered while creating the case studies. The result is a knowledge base that describes the way we think when we write, read, and clean code. Readers will come away from this book understandingHow to tell the difference between good and bad code How to write good code and how to transform bad code into good code How to create good names, good functions, good objects, and good classes How to format code for maximum readability How to implement complete error handling without obscuring code logic How to unit test and practice test-driven development What smells and heuristics can help you identify bad codeThis book is a must for any developer, software engineer, project manager, team lead, or systems analyst with an interest in producing better code. 

Google’s Executive Productivity Advisor offers insights on how to make the “new way of work” work for you, providing actionable steps to optimize your productivity, accomplish more, prevent burnout, and cultivate a harmonious work-life balance. Every day, tens of thousands of Google employees, from executives to interns, rely on Laura Mae Martin’s tips and best practices for how to make the most of their time. Now, with Uptime, Laura brings her unique approach to productivity and well-being to anyone who wants to be more effective and experience “calm accomplishment,” whether at work, at school, or in their own personal lives. Laura began her Google career in sales but quickly carved out a niche for herself as a productivity expert. For more than a decade, she’s been coaching Google executives and employees on how to achieve a state of “productivity Zen”—a holistic approach to conquering everything from the avalanche of emails in their inboxes to becoming the master of their own calendars and running excellent meetings. Her strategies have been widely adopted by many, including entry-level employees looking to amplify their individual impact, middle managers, and top executives working across global teams. As many of us have moved to a hybrid environment blending work and home, managing our time efficiently and remaining productive is more important than ever. In Uptime, Laura shows how to thrive no matter where you’re working, giving concrete steps that help you focus on your priorities and keep good systems, routines, and tactics in place. Uptime explains how to make technology work for you and make “feeling on top of it” your new normal. It’s a blueprint for operating at the highest levels of productivity while enhancing your own personal well-being.

  Capturing a wealth of experience about the design of object-oriented software, four top-notch designers present a catalog of simple and succinct solutions to commonly occurring design problems. Previously undocumented, these 23 patterns allow designers to create more flexible, elegant, and ultimately reusable designs without having to rediscover the design solutions themselves. The authors begin by describing what patterns are and how they can help you design object-oriented software. They then go on to systematically name, explain, evaluate, and catalog recurring designs in object-oriented systems. With Design Patterns as your guide, you will learn how these important patterns fit into the software development process, and how you can leverage them to solve your own design problems most efficiently.  

This book explains the keys to successful investment and the pitfalls that can destroy capital or ruin a career. Utilizing passages from his memos to illustrate his ideas, Marks teaches by example, detailing the development of an investment philosophy that fully acknowledges the complexities of investing and the perils of the financial world. Brilliantly applying insight to today's volatile markets, Marks offers a volume that is part memoir, part creed, with a number of broad takeaways.

The 10th-anniversary edition of the New York Times business bestseller-now updated with "Answers to Ten Questions People Ask"We attempt or avoid difficult conversations every day-whether dealing with an underperforming employee, disagreeing with a spouse, or negotiating with a client. From the Harvard Negotiation Project, the organization that brought you Getting to Yes, Difficult Conversations provides a step-by-step approach to having those tough conversations with less stress and more success. you'll learn how to:· Decipher the underlying structure of every difficult conversation· Start a conversation without defensiveness· Listen for the meaning of what is not said· Stay balanced in the face of attacks and accusations· Move from emotion to productive problem solving

How to Reduce Code Complexity and Develop Software More Sustainably"Mark Seemann is well known for explaining complex concepts clearly and thoroughly. In this book he condenses his wide-ranging software development experience into a set of practical, pragmatic techniques for writing sustainable and human-friendly code. This book will be a must-read for every programmer."Scott Wlaschin, author of Domain Modeling Made FunctionalCode That Fits in Your Head offers indispensable, practical advice for writing code at a sustainable pace and controlling the complexity that causes projects to spin out of control. Reflecting decades of experience helping software teams succeed, Mark Seemann guides students from zero (no code) to deployed features and shows how to maintain a good cruising speed as they add functionality, address cross-cutting concerns, troubleshoot, and optimize. They'll find valuable ideas, practices, and processes for key issues ranging from checklists to teamwork, encapsulation to decomposition, API design to unit testing. Seemann illuminates his insights with code examples drawn from a complete sample project. Written in C#, they're designed to be clear and useful to anyone who uses any object-oriented language including Java , C++, and Python. To facilitate deeper exploration, all code and extensive commit messages are available for download.Choose mindsets and processes that work, and escape bad metaphors that don'tUse checklists to improve outcomes with skills already possessedGet past analysis paralysis by creating and deploying a vertical slice to an applicationCounteract forces that lead to code rot and unnecessary complexityMaster better techniques for changing code behaviorDiscover ways to solve code problems more quickly and effectivelyThink more productively about performance and securityRegister your book for convenient access to downloads, updates, and/or corrections as they become available. See inside book for details.

Software development projects can be fun, productive, and even daring. Yet they can consistently deliver value to a business and remain under control. Extreme Programming (XP) was conceived and developed to address the specific needs of software development conducted by small teams in the face of vague and changing requirements. This new lightweight methodology challenges many conventional tenets, including the long-held assumption that the cost of changing a piece of software necessarily rises dramatically over the course of time. XP recognizes that projects have to work to achieve this reduction in cost and exploit the savings once they have been earned. Fundamentals of XP include: Distinguishing between the decisions to be made by business interests and those to be made by project stakeholders. Writing unit tests before programming and keeping all of the tests running at all times. Integrating and testing the whole system--several times a day. Producing all software in pairs, two programmers at one screen. Starting projects with a simple design that constantly evolves to add needed flexibility and remove unneeded complexity. Putting a minimal system into production quickly and growing it in whatever directions prove most valuable. Why is XP so controversial? Some sacred cows don't make the cut in XP: Don't force team members to specialize and become analysts, architects, programmers, testers, and integrators--every XP programmer participates in all of these critical activities every day. Don't conduct complete up-front analysis and design--an XP project starts with a quick analysis of the entire system, and XPprogrammers continue to make analysis and design decisions throughout development. Develop infrastructure and frameworks as you develop your application, not up-front--delivering business value is the heartbeat that drives XP projects. Don't write and maintain implementation documentation--communication in XP projects occurs face-to-face, or through efficient tests and carefully written code. You may love XP, or you may hate it, but "Extreme Programming Explained" will force you to take a fresh look at how you develop software. 0201616416B04062001

Improve and Accelerate Software Delivery for Large, Distributed, Complex Projects   The Nexus Framework is the simplest, most effective approach to applying Scrum at scale across multiple teams, sites, and time zones. Created by Scrum.org–the pioneering Scrum training and certification organization founded by Scrum co-creator Ken Schwaber–Nexus draws on decades of experience to address the unique challenges teams face in coming together, sharing work, and managing and minimizing dependencies.   The Nexus™ Framework for Scaling Scrum is a concise book that shows how Nexus helps teams to deliver a complex, multi-platform, software-based product in short, frequent cycles, without sacrificing consistency or quality, and without adding unnecessary complexity or straying from Scrum’s core principles. Using an extended case study, the authors illustrate how Nexus helps teams solve common scaling challenges like reducing cross-team dependencies, preserving team self-organization and transparency, and ensuring accountability. Understand the challenges of delivering working, integrated product increments with multiple teams, and how Nexus addresses them Form a Nexus around a new or existing product and learn how that Nexus sets goals and plans its work Run Sprints within a Nexus, provide transparency into progress, conduct effective Nexus Sprint reviews, and use Nexus Sprint Retrospectives to continuously improve Overcome the distributed team collaboration challenges

Corporate financial reports. They re oftentimes the only place investors can turn for information about a business s overall health. But with major financial scandals popping up in greater numbers (and with more inevitably on the way), the time has never been better for a newly-revised edition of the classic guide to the games accountants play. The first two editions of Financial Shenanigans contained a wealth of information on how businesses play it fast and loose with earnings reports. And now the 3rd Edition builds on this strong foundation, broadening its focus to include global markets and arming us with all-new information on how to detect shenanigans in cash flow statements; EBITBDA, same-store sales, capitalization reports and corporate communications; and other sources. Other indispensable resources include: The latest information on other problem areas, including pension accounting, financial instruments, and off-the-balance-sheet entities Key sections on financial institutions Tips, tricks, and checklists to help you research businesses before you invest in them

As commander of Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), General Stanley McChrystal played a crucial role in the War on Terror. But when he took the helm in 2004, America was losing that war badly: despite vastly inferior resources and technology, Al Qaeda was outmaneuvering America's most elite warriors. McChrystal came to realize that today's faster, more interdependent world had overwhelmed the conventional, top-down hierarchy of the U.S. military. Al Qaeda had seen the future: a decentralized network that could move quickly and strike ruthlessly. To defeat such an enemy, JSOC would have to discard a century of management wisdom, and pivot from a pursuit of mechanical efficiency to organic adaptability. Under McChrystal's leadership, JSOC remade itself, in the midst of a grueling war, into something entirely new: a network that combined robust centralized communication with decentralized managerial authority. As a result, they beat back Al Qaeda. In this book, McChrystal shows not only how the military made that transition, but also how similar shifts are possible in all organizations, from large companies to startups to charities to governments. In a turbulent world, the best organizations think and act like a team of teams, embracing small groups that combine the freedom to experiment with a relentless drive to share what they've learned. Drawing on a wealth of evidence from his military career, the private sector, and sources as diverse as hospital emergency rooms and NASA's space program, McChrystal frames the existential challenge facing today's organizations, and proposes a compelling, effective solution.