50 Tips for Writing More Efficient, Robust, and Maintainable Perl Code
Arthur's rating:
 5.0
On Nov 15, 2014 Arthur Zubarev wrote: Modern Perl Best Practices 50 Tips for Writing More Efficient, Robust, and Maintainable Perl Code by Damian Conway, O’Reilly Media Video Review
This is my second video from Damian within a year. I decided to watch the author delivering educational content on Perl best practices this time. As a database practitioner myself I must state following best practices is a big thing, it is like that safety net you may have been seeing in circus. It is not much about standards, but more on how to deliver more aligned code that is ready to read and thus understand by others, or yourself after a while, most importantly, it guards you against common pitfalls programming in one language or another. It also transparently makes you a better developer at the same time. With initially substantial and then little effort. So learn and stick to it. Damian has made an awesome job delivering a ton of useful and thoughtful insight, concrete examples on so many topics. I wish I could have such a teacher when I was studying. Each video chapter ends with a summary outlining the most important topics which makes it easy to revisit the key points after a while.
Perl, notoriously known as one of the most difficult languages to read if produced by other programmers (100s of ways to do the same thing). Modern Perl is not an escape from the old. The video is going to stay as important today is it could be years ago (if were around) or in a decade. It must be a good investment into your career.
I liked and re-watched the both chapters on Subroutines (so commonly found), and also I/O (for being a tad complex). But the even the topic on Built-Ins unexpectedly was very informative. Even the chapter on naming was something to fill in with in gaps of the knowledge. Error Handling is a must to watch. I believe each other will have something to complement with.
I have a thought that this video not only applies to Perl developers, but all/any developers who code in an imperative language. And I also think this video is quite unique in terms of content and coverage.
I do not see how it can be any better, I did not code 10K hours in Perl and I am fully aware Damian is a skilled (top notch) developer who must be listened to.
A 5 out of 5 mark from me.
Disclaimer: I received this video for free for the review purpose as per the O’Reilly Reader Reviewer program. Full Review >
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Arthur's rating:
 4.0
On Nov 9, 2014 Arthur Zubarev wrote: An excellent video for people starting to program in Java
Why I chose to learn on Java 8 is because of all the latest buzz around it. Turns out the rumours on the demise of Java have been greatly exacerbated. So Learning Java 8 could, and I trust indeed, be a very good investment into your career.
I need to start by saying I like Mike Kelly is a great lecturer. Yet Mike is what every teacher should be: have a clear, well paced voice, and deliver the material in a non-rush ahead manner.
The course the author teaches is quite basic, but you will be able to accomplish a near real life Java desktop console application. If you already have some basic knowledge on how to write in any other procedural language then you will mostly gain insight on how to utilize Eclipse to be productive coding in Java.
Some basics get repeated at times a few more times then to my liking, but repetition is a good for learning. Like I hinted, you will not learn here any CRUD database operations nor RESTFULL or Web applications are covered, but regardless, Mike teaches enough to wrestle these specifics yourself, after all since Java is very much alive there is a huge user community that is always willing to help you on forums or IRC chats.
If I were eligible to provide advice in material preparations, I would suggest to re-arrange some sections so for example the For Loops or If statements would be covered before the classes or Unit Test.
Another advice to Mike would be hinting on stopping more often allowing for exercises on my own machine.
All in all, it is great teaching material, let me stress that, to the newcomers to the Java World.
4 out of 5 is what I think it should be rated at.
Disclaimer: I received a free version of this video for review purposes as part of the O'Reilly Reader Reviewer program. Full Review >
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Arthur's rating:
5.0
On Nov 3, 2014 Arthur Zubarev wrote: PostgreSQL: Up and Running by Regina Obe, O'Reilly Media Book Review
Like I have already mentioned in my previous blog post databases are lately in the spotlight, left and right. This was the primary reason for me to choose yet another book on databases for review*. I know that NoSQL data stores are more trendy for now, but the traditional RDBMS' would not give its sheer install base out quite easily like that yet to them. The secondary reason was, while I am a full time in SQL Server, I suspected I may be missing something by not getting familiar with what most IT pros may state competition.
Indeed, having a backdoor or more correctly a mechanism to allowing custom extensions (called add-ons from PG 9.1) to be baked into the database engine allow taking PostgreSQL to new heights without going through costly upgrades. One of the intersting ones (at least to me) is the key-value store called HStore http://tinyurl.com/7ebg3nw. Just for reference, starting SQL Server 2014 the In-Memory engine is part of the core database. Did I mention the RDMBS' don't give up just yet?
The book mentions so many different versions of PostgreSQL so many times at time my head was spinning trying to recall what is used in what version or different. After finished reading the book I started to suspect it would be better to for the author to concentrate on the latest version because the previous builds are so different. Overall, I fail to grasp what was the main objective of this book. The material coverage is sparse or not in depth, of course as a result the book is quite short, and you can always buy another book or solicit various forums or IRC chats.
Well, the book has answered my primary and secondary interests, and seems that I am not the biggest fan of the PostgreSQL as a database engine yet. Why? This is probably because I am too spoiled by the SQL Server install and forget way of operating. Me, as a database developer and DBA needing to restart the database after a simple security file modification or setting the memory via SHMMAX or threads for multiple backup restores make me chuckle.
However, PostgreSQL has many advantages, I admit, too. What I liked is the ability to backup a single table or have backups restorable to any version of the database engine is a big plus. Not to mention triggers on views, unlogged tables or exclusion constraints. Read the book to know a lot more.
When it comes to the book itself, Regina and Leo did a fantastic job, they know the product really well, 5 out of 5 is my mark.
*Disclaimer: I received this book for free in exchange for a review as part of the O'Reilly Reader Review Program. Full Review >
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Interactive SQL for Apache Hadoop
Arthur's rating:
4.0
On Oct 24, 2014 Arthur Zubarev wrote: Easy to understand good starter to doing things with Impala
Impala is a recent, but very valuable addition to the Hadoop ecosystem. I must say (after reading the book) Cloudera made a big step forward in the right direction.
The rational behind bringing Impala to life is the proliferation of SQL. SQL as a language has many flavors, but in one form or another is already known to data practitioners coming to Hadoop from various platforms and DBMS. Impala implements a subset of ANSI-92 SQL specification, regardless, even the subset is powerful enough to make a developer productive. In my opinion, since SQL it is based on algebra and sets, and because HDFS (Hadoop) is just able to expose datasets Impala is the right choice for MDL and DDL even for the Big Data projects.
At 110 pages the book is not terribly long, but bear in mind Impala as a product is still under active development, as a bonus, the author has a close relationship with the product working at Cloudera, this is a big plus resulting in top professional content. John structured the book so it is basically divided into two parts: 1st and the largest is on Impala implementation and its role in data analysis and processing, the 2nd part covers most commonly used tasks, pitfalls or simply advice and techniques.
What I did not find is more on how to use it with Hive, Scoop, HBase and Pig, I will take a star out of my rating for this.
Let me reiterate, the book covers the Cloudera’s Hadoop Impala distribution, if you are using a different distribution, Impala is not part of it.
Like I said, I am giving this book a 4 out of 5 stars. Good work John!
Disclaimer: the book was provided to me for free as part of O’Reilly’s blogger reviewer program.
Full Review >
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Flexible, Scalable, and Reliable Data Streaming
Arthur's rating:
4.0
On Oct 11, 2014 Arthur Zubarev wrote: Using Flume: Flexible, Scalable, and Reliable Data Streaming by Hari Shreedharan, O’Reilly Media Book Review
Using Flume is one of the books from the so called Big Data series. Flume is one of the graduated projects from the Apache foundation incubator and as of time of this writing is at version 1.5 which means (in the OSS terms) a mature product. How battle tested it is I cannot say as I am not using it, but our world increasingly relies on fast and distributed methods of log data processing. I truly believe it is worth investing time in learning tomorrow’s technology and propose using it at the right moment and opportunity. I am confident my own journey through data will naturally take me to using Flume some day, and I may not be surprised if it is happening soon. This book I am sure is going to take a Big Data practitioner (like myself) a step or two further regardless. If you are looking at entering a project or POC involving Flume, then this book is a must. If you are using it already this book is worth your buck too and not only for “just in caseâ€Â. The work of Hari (who worked at such iconic companies as Yahoo! before Cloudera) is probably fundamental to Flume. Here is why it helps:
Assessing whether Flume is the appropriate fit to address your project/business needs/goals;
The book has seemingly enough code (Java only) to create simple Flume extensions or indices
Full coverage of the three popular data serializations techniques
Persisting logs and even in-transit processing
Optimization of Flume
Performance tuning and monitoring
If you want to know why I gave this book a 4 out of 5 star rating is because
The structure, or flow of the book I see supposed to be different, 1st should be basics 1st, it is not too logically outlined
The book is a tad dry (to my taste maybe), what I mean there are no practical, “from the trenches†examples on why this and that setup, configuration is needed in what circumstances;
Java centric and discusses only the Apache products
Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book in exchange of writing a review as per the reader review program rules. Full Review >
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Understanding Vim's Lesser-Known Features for More Effective Editing
Arthur's rating:
3.0
On Sep 23, 2014 Arthur Zubarev wrote: See the power of VIM!
Vim,and the text editors from its family are incredibly powerful,feature-rich, and extensible. They are running on every possible OS,in fact I have it on my Android phone. Besides, I know people who deny powers of every IDE on the market in favour to using VIM. Complete software suites and websites are built solely using VIM.
But for arguably many the learning curve is actually quite steep, or it looks intimidating, especially at the beginning. This is why I see a lot of value in the visual kind of training as this tutorial. And it is quite lengthy. Despite it is running for several hours (O’Reilly product page does not indicate the exact run time) prepare to spend at least double the time learning. This is because you want to MASTER the tool, not just acknowledge its capabilities.
Contrary to my taste, the author chose to concentrate on roughly 80% speaking versa demoing VIM’s commands in it (I will run ahead of the locomotive here and say this largely influenced my three star rating).
Furthermore,I initially scrambled to research on the vimrc file mentioned at the beginning, besides, Damian chose just to “dive into†the editor without providing specifics on how the extensibility works,but he mentioned his vimrc is very long. Likewise, no further info was given on how to install VIM or its plugins (which every typical)power user would want, but several were mentioned. These are all smaller (as Google and Bing are a click away) items, but make such seemingly “intermediate to advanced†video incomplete, I admit, Imade dozens of such stop and goes during the tutorial and I frankly testify fail to classify what level of user this tutorial is aimed at.
Even a seditious thoughts tarted to occupy my head (which later dissipated)that may be Google could be a good teacher for VIM. Not so.
There are positive things about this video, too. Many. I liked the part on visual modes,the ‘search’ was covered as complete as I can imagine,my favourite section was on folding, never seen it covered before.
Amusingly,the author stated in the closing that he covered only 1% of the editor, feel the power of VIM! Full Review >
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What Do Databases Really Mean?
Arthur's rating:
5.0
On Sep 12, 2014 Arthur Zubarev wrote: A relational database developer's eye opener!
As a seasoned database professional and SQL Server MVP I was actually unaware of one of the most important notions of the [known to me] Relational Theory – The Closed World Assumption. I frankly speaking approached the opportunity to watch the video with a set of very low expectations, expecting to yawn soon and learn very little, boy how wrong I was!
I did feel like I am back to my late teens, sitting in the university, and it was a pleasant feeling, however C. J. Date did not sound [boring] like any of my university professors at all, it was a blast of useful, insightful information, every single second.
Indeed, the author comes from an enterprise (IBM), not the academia.
The pace of the video is fast, as it is action packed, but this way your every cent/penny is at work.
I admit, you will need to know a few terms as 3VLS – or get it known, but you will also need to understand the PK-FK principals, tuples and be very logical to extract the most benefits out of the video.
The part about data integrity – is the KEY! The piece on eliminating the NULLs is a GEM. Do NOT miss these two.
Sit, relax, be ready to pause and ponder, and enjoy the video, very much suggested to whoever builds relational databases.
Verdict: 5+ out of the possible 5. It’s an eye opener! Full Review >
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Solutions and Examples for Java Developers
Arthur's rating:
5.0
On Sep 9, 2014 Arthur Zubarev wrote: Thorough and comprehensive coverage of the modern Java development techniques
Like I expected, you will find sample code and techniques covering a wide spectrum of our developers’ life, from networking to web development, building and releasing libraries, to profiling and debugging code, a very well structured book all in all.
Besides, this book is also of great help if you plan on grasping or starting coding in Groovy or Clojure, which I am planning on doing.
I was able to find more than I needed. Actually, a day or two after I got the book I needed to tweak a server side bulk data loading script, it was written in simple Java based on an example from DataStax, but I saw more potential and applied one of the OO techniques to make some of the code re-usable... Full Review >
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Write Your Own Functions and Simulations
Arthur's rating:
4.0
On Sep 1, 2014 Arthur Zubarev wrote: A Fun, Fun to Read Book
In short, it is fun, fun to read! Every chapter or exercise is full of tasteful, useful insight as the author takes you thru accomplishing several very engaging projects. You will learn a wealth of not so obvious techniques which will help you build better performing, more accurate apps, faster working code with fewer bugs and jump with you into some under-explored areas or R.
I like the part on vectorization the most, and even tried to change my code to doing it,but it is still a work in progress as I can't QA my change to my liking. The other parts of the book that I liked and trust will be of help to most readers are working with data-frames, matrices, vectors,lists, also environments (did not see this covered anywhere else).
S3/4 and ref classes were, and largely remain obscure after reading this book. The plotting was hardly covered. Pity, it is such an in-demand topic.Integration with other languages is not there, too.
So, there is room for more improvement, nevertheless, the book I foresee will spark more interest in exploring R further.
The bottom line is,the book can serve as an additional or supplementary material and inspire more reading.
I am giving this book four stars out of five.
Disclaimer: the book was provided to me for free under the O'Reilly reader review program rules. Full Review >
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A Step-by-Step Guide to Creating Dynamic Websites
Arthur's rating:
5.0
On Aug 15, 2014 Arthur Zubarev wrote: A must have book for those who begin sailing in the Web development waters
It was quite a long review experience in my life! No wonder, the book is 700 pages long, but boy oh boy it is not boring at all. I confess I skipped a few pages here and there, but it was rewarding, I was even able to produce my own small, fully functional website in my company’s Intranet that receives requests for database backup restores and logs their processing history; MySQL, JavaScript and Ajax driven (yes, the book covers that, too). I must admit I did not use CSS as much as I should, but I am planning on returning to this book to apply a few more advance techniques to my website (Ch 20 on CSS3) to make it more of an eye candy.
Let me state that this is a timely update release for Learning PHP, MySQL, JavaScript, CSS & HTML5 which happens to be a 3rd edition of this book this time around exactly when HTML5 adoption is gaining so much traction.
More on the book itself, it is worth your money to an extend it worth your every penny: each chapter is verged so it takes you right from a printed book page to real-life example implementations. The book is very well structured, it has many (26), but succinct chapters that end with questions that help you memorize what you learned (this is my preferred way of studying), the book has the answers in the appendix. If you want to hear me whining, then may be I should say that the book author sticks to using the Zend Framework, no others covered, thus even though it is a very popular and mature development platform and has all the bells and whistles you may need to run a commercial grade website you may need to figure out yourself how you would develop and deploy using other Frameworks your company uses. Also the book does not cover Unit Testing.
What I liked: the Ajax section and HTML5 are my favourites. Full Review >
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Developing Web Applications with Python
Arthur's rating:
5.0
On Jun 23, 2014 Arthur Zubarev wrote: A very promising framework explained by a skilled professional
I remember Miguel at one of the O’Reilly educational webcasts greeting the audience in three or four languages. Energetic, full of wisdom, creativity and warmth. How happy I was when I saw his forthcoming book available for review as part of the Reader Reviewer Program? Immensely! And my expectations were met: both Miguel and Flask ROCK!
Written in a very professional manner, concise and at the same time with a feeling that the author is your friend, advocate and teacher.
So Flask itself, seems relatively a newcomer to the Web 2.0 stage looks complete and mature with an active, long list of committers. My questions (including to the author) were answered in no time. A very good support. Cannot be happier about the product, both book and Flask.
So more on the book: it will guide you through the bricks and mortar of Flask and how would you use it to build a fully working, yet modern Web 2.0 App.
I used Ubuntu 14 without any difficulty. The book is extremely well organized, it feels like I attend a Web App craft shop of a kind. Gradually climbing the ropes of a powerful giant Flask.
Python as a language is very welcoming, yet powerful at the same time, I hardly concentrated on its internals so no solid prior knowledge of any Python is really necessary.
Again, Miguel is a skillful teacher, even the part of the book where there was database involvement was written so I felt completely detached from what exactly is my persistence layer, even toward the end when you are ready to deploy you do not feel overwhelmed by specifics, Miguel remains neutral and unbiased to 3rd party tools, I do not know how Miguel managed to convey such material this way.
I am sure Flask is Web 3.0 compliant as well as armed and ready for any purpose. Very inspiring!
I give this book 5 starts, 100 out of 100 wholeheartedly. Grab it even if you hesitate.
Full Review >
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Arthur's rating:
5.0
On Jun 4, 2014 Arthur Zubarev wrote: An Introduction to D3.js: From Scattered to Scatterplot Video by Scott Murray via O’Reilly Media Review
An Introduction to D3.js: From Scattered to Scatterplot video by Scott Murray goes into my favourite educational products list, pity GoodReads has no videos section.
No wonder, Scott is an assistant professor at USF, and a code artist: just point your modern browser to his blog http://alignedleft.com! By the way, I happened to watch him presenting at one of the O’Reilly’s free webcasts on D3 and was impressed very much by Scott’s teaching abilities, the depth of technical knowledge and of course his data visualizations. To confess, to me, Scott represents the next generation of teachers: computer and technology savvy professionals who know a lot outside of one’s teaching domain.
But OK, enough about my impressions, I am here to convey to my dear reader that this video product is superb. It was first I ever watched from O’Reilly frankly, but Scott and D3 both rock!
More about the video course now, or let’s talk in general about educational videos: they are a great idea! Why we don’t have enough of them?
So, this video with its runtime at almost 3 hours is one of the most effective ones that can put you on ice, quick, err… I meant plotting your visualizations.
The course covers the very basics, initially, so no intimidation involved, it starts gently, after all Scott is not that kind of a swim teacher who throws one’s students into a rough ocean… well, despite the course involves a Mac and MAMP the video demonstrates techniques that will run on Windows 7 or newer and most Linux distributions. The only nuance – you have to run a modern browser, and it is reasonable demand for a JavaScript library which D3 is.
The course gradually takes you above basics where you start feeling empowered, this happened to me at ‘Transitions’. One note to Scott: I would love to have more exercises after the advanced parts.
Even more fun, and advanced techniques are covered toward the end as Scales and Axes, and it all ends like at Cirque DuSoleil with a fantastic loud boom: a very cool data visualization that no one would be ashamed of to boast with to a friend! And it was my favourite part, too. The course has very sensible sections, easy to download even to an older iPad or Android tablet, just relax and absorb the cool skills!
I feel wanting sharing with you it made me itch to start visualizing data at work (and as a database pro I have plenty :-) and at home (if my wife does not retract her permission). I hope you get the same itch.
Verdict: 5 out of 5 (can I give 10?).
Disclaimer: I received this video free of charge as part of O’Reilly’s blogger reviewer program. Full Review >
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Powerful and Scalable Data Storage
Arthur's rating:
5.0
On May 26, 2014 Arthur Zubarev wrote: A very good companion for those to sail through the NoSQL waters
Who working in IT today never heard of Big Data or NoSQL moniker? Barely there are few. No wonder all the publishers emit books on this topic at a high rate. But then it puzzles the consumer, what book to choose?
MongoDB: The Definitive Guide, 2nd Edition by Kristina Chodorow is my 2nd best read of year 2014. More on that later.
But why MongoDB? The answer is simple, it seems to be the most widely adopted NoSQL store. Even if you do not regularly follow technical news articles be aware that MongoDB runs and supported on many platforms, from Linux of any flavour to Windows Azure (Cloud OS), it has recently joined forces with Cloudera to grow even further, and stronger.
What actually makes MongoDB standing out of a crowd of probably 150 other NoSQL offerings? In my view this is for MongoDB having an easy to understand implementation, ease of sharding and scaling out, JSON/JavaScript powered queries familiar to Web-scale developers and it auto load-balancing.
But users need to master it. This is especially true for such rapidly being developed product. So a book like this makes perfect sense to have (note: I am not affiliated with O'Reilly).
So back to why I liked this book very much? It is due to a variety of reasons, but I list only the following three that influenced my opinion the most:
1) Reading it feels like this book becomes your technical friend, a guide or companion;
2) Even for a non-technical reader, or who is new to NoSQL data stores this book does not bring with it any steep learning curves, it submerges one into NoSQL craft gradually, and
3) Lastly, the book provides enough intricate insight into making one a MongoDB gate keeper, mature pro, or just a go-to guy.
So, what will you learn?
From basic shell commands to creating documents, from querying to performance tuning, then to replication and load balancing, recovering from peculiar situations, to finally preserving your data and ensuring integrity.
I think this is enough to succeed, indeed at 400 pagers this is a brilliant 2nd edition by Kristina Chodorow! Full Review >
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Creating Professional Programs with Perl
Arthur's rating:
5.0
On Feb 27, 2014 Arthur Zubarev wrote: Mastering Perl, 2nd Edition by brian d foy, O’Reilly Media Book Review
What can be better than getting a book from a renowned author (of at least two other books), a Perl committer, contributor and a person who teaches it, too? Impossible to answer, impossible to beat.
A few words on the raise and… I do not believe there is a fall of Perl, but you may disagree. Perl, even outside of the CGI programming, is still very much alive and… you can do a lot in it! I also see it as a powerful data, text manipulation and processing platform (built-in RegEx, not to speak of the power of CPAN).
The book rocks, even thought I am almost new (I used to write quite a few short-liners in my life under Linux, but they were mostly for some subtle text processing) to Perl. The book does not limit you to exploring the subject as it is represented in the book. Even as you progress through, actually, the book has list of references to other books and supplementary material at the end of each chapter. The material covers numerous advanced topics from how would you debug a Perl program using various debuggers, profile it, clean to how to write your own modules and ultimately contribute to the success of the language. It’s fun and easy to read, has useful concrete examples and short enough code to comprehend.
Full Review >
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Arthur's rating:
5.0
On Jan 31, 2014 Arthur Zubarev wrote: t not be your 1st or may be 2nd book if you are new to JavaScript
A better name for this book would be JavaScript Bible, alas seems that this trademark name already belongs to another publisher: Wiley. Reading this book, well, made me feel exactly as reading the Bible: advance a little, go back, read slower, resume. Thing is, the amount of information thrown at you is overwhelming and thus begs to come back and revisit a chapter or two. Please do not take this wrongly, that is actually a good thing, this book supposed to be a hard read for those who are new to JavaScript: the King of the Scripting Languages for the Web which to my astonishment being attempted dethroned by Dart and possibly other contestants.
It is a fact that the book is being revised (a big +) for the 6th time and republished, so 100% David sure knows his subject.
Full Review >
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Straight Talk from the Frontline
Arthur's rating:
5.0
On Jan 16, 2014 Arthur Zubarev wrote: Comprehensive Advice on What Approach to Use in Your Data Science Project
The best thing about this book is that in one single investment you get a comprehensive coverage for life on what approach or algorithm to use against a given data science task at hand. You must feel more secure after reading this book and as a result be more eager and ready to embark on any data science project. Full Review >
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Using Hacking Skills to Win the Job Hunt Game
Arthur's rating:
5.0
On Dec 8, 2013 Arthur Zubarev wrote: Un-conventional, fun to read, fast paced
Let me state right away – whoever did not read this book missed much...this book is a companion-like book about teaching you how to get a better job, will equip you with a wealth of tools, yet will allow you growing career-wise with it and it I trust remain relevant for a very long time. Full Review >
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Unlocking Scientific Data
Arthur's rating:
5.0
On Nov 27, 2013 Arthur Zubarev wrote: An excellent technical read, concise, professional
This is an excellent book, written in a concise, professional manner.
The author made sure the book is full of useful examples covering each nuance or an important feature so reading this book feels natural and logical. I am also glad the author devoted a significant effort to convey to a developer on the proper methods of concurrent programming, which is what a pity – a common omission in many beginners’ books.
I am sure this book will make you going or will let you start coding against HDF5 in no time.
I am sure this book will be used as a table reference (or on your computer desktop). Full Review >
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Preparing, Sharing, and Analyzing Complex Information
Arthur's rating:
5.0
On Nov 4, 2013 Arthur Zubarev wrote: Fundamental, full of wisdom and advice yet thorough
A fantastic book! Must be part, if not yet, of the fundamentals of the Big Data as a field of science.
Highly recommend to those who are into the Big Data practice.
Yet, I confess this book is one of my best reads this year and for a number of reasons:
The book is full of wisdom, intimate insight, historical facts and real life examples to how Big Data projects get conceived, operate and sadly, yes, sometimes die.
But not only that, the book is most importantly is filled with valuable advice, accurate and even overwhelming amount of reference (from the positive side), and the author does not event stop there:
there are numerous technical excerpts, links and examples allowing to quickly accomplish many daunting tasks or make you aware of what one needs to perform as a data practitioner (excuse my use of the word practitioner, I just did not find a better substitute to it to trying to reference all who face Big Data).
Be aware that Jules Berman’s background is in medicine, naturally, this book discusses this subject a lot as it is very dear to the author’s heart I believe, this does not make this book any less significant however, quite the opposite, I trust if there is an area in science or practice where the biggest benefits can be ripped from Big Data projects it is indeed the medical science, let’s make Cancer history!
On a personal note, for me as a database, BI professional it has helped to understand better the motives behind Big Data initiatives, their underwater rivers and high altitude winds that divert or propel them forward.
Additionally, I was impressed by the depth and number of mining algorithms covered in it. I must tell this made me very curious and tempting to find out more about these indispensable attributes of Big Data so sure I will be trying stretching my wallet to acquire several books that go more in depth on several most popular of them.
Full Review >
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Recipes for Mastering Python 3
Arthur's rating:
5.0
On Sep 17, 2013 Arthur Zubarev wrote: Worth every penny, a book to read again, and again
I am tempted to state right away that this book is one of these rare “gemsâ€Â!
Absolutely worth every penny spent and perhaps even more in a way of getting more done in less time or even just can be used to advance professionally.
So big thank you to Alex Martelli and David Ascher!
I can’t imagine how much time, energy, insight and effort the authors put into this book, but it is sure one of the longest professional books I have ever read.
Like I said, this book is very comprehensive at 608 pages long and touches most, if not all, aspects a typical IT pro would deal with in his or her professional life. It may appear though very dry, and in my opinion it should be, but it is the book to come back to again and again, time after time, year after year, so if you need a single specific recipe, you will not feel the book is very short thanks to the way it is structured. Be informed though that this book is covering Python 3 and not the 2.7 which comes canned with most Linux distributions.
I happen to actually use this book to cope with several assignments at work involving some medium to high complexity data processing for reporting purposes, thus more than a few recipes were used.
Namely, these were “Strings and Text†Ch. 2, “Numbers, Dates and Times†Ch. 3, “Files and I/O†Ch. 4, then hopped to “Functions†Ch. 7, which followed by “Parsing, Modifying and Rewriting XML†Ch. 6.6 and finally landed on “Integrating with a Relational Database†Ch. 6.8. I wish though chapter 7 “Functions†would precede most others because I think it belongs right after “Iterators and generators†which I needed to use as I expanded my program.
I must tell each did its magic, after all Python excels on processing text! The reading continued in a free-form manner thereafter.
Now let me expand a little about my personal experience: it was the 2nd ebook reading on my newly acquired Samsung Galaxy 8 Note after reviewing a previous book and this time the experience on my mobile device using MoonReaderPro (that was updated to the latest version which supposed to take care of many bugs) just prior to using it unfortunately was not that great. Specifically the formatting aspect and namely the code portion of the ebook. I do not know who to blame but the code text appeared lost its line feed positions as well as syntax highlighting. Sadly, I was not able to complete the .mobi ebook on my tablet resorting to using Foxit on my old laptop.
I still, nevertheless give this book the well deserved 5 out of 5 rating because it does deliver very well what was it has promised. Full Review >
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Effortless Application Deployment and Scaling
Arthur's rating:
3.0
On Aug 8, 2013 Arthur Zubarev wrote: Concise, Easy to read
Are you a mature web developer or just starting your dive into writing scalable Web 2.0/3.0 applications? Or may be you already have an application that is gaining popularity that makes you concerned about withstanding larger traffic? Or perhaps you are at the very beginning of your IT career stumbled onto a strangely sounding and geeky moniker?
If any, or all of the above, look no further Neil and Richard’s book on Heroku: Up and Running.
Indeed, it will quickly submerge you into the wonderful world of scalable IT operations and teach you a great deal of prudent, responsible, yet technically accurate usage of PaaS.
Full Review >
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Arthur's rating:
5.0
On Jul 12, 2013 Arthur Zubarev wrote: A good read for those embarking onto the Big Data journey
I am sure every IT pro, executive or about anyone who interfaces databases on a regular basis already heard of the Big Data term. However, despite is was arguably coined back in year 2000 the actual raise of the waive has just began. Jeffrey Needham’s book is exactly for those who are willing to ride or already on this wave.
Jeffrey Needham will take you through a short history of Big Data and amaze with useful facts as well as sure set you right regarding the expectations starting from the implementation to running a Big Data enterprise.
The journey will continue and expand into covering the aspects of acquiring, setting up and running a Big Data venture.
Full Review >
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