The Pragmatic Bookshelf

Agile Web Development with Rails

Rails just keeps on changing. Rails 3 and Ruby 1.9 bring hundreds of improvements, including new APIs and substantial performance enhancements. The fourth edition of this award-winning classic has been reorganized and refocused so it’s more useful than ever before for developers new to Ruby and Rails.

Rails 3 is a major release—the changes aren’t just incremental, but structural. So we decided to follow suit. This book isn’t just a mild reworking of the previous edition to make it run with the new Rails. Instead, it’s a complete refactoring.

You’ll still find the Depot example at the front, but you’ll also find testing knitted right in. Gone are the long reference chapters—that’s what the web does best. Instead you’ll find more targeted information on all the aspects of Rails that you’ll need to be a successful Web developer.

Jan 2011

Arduino

Arduino is an open-source platform that makes DIY electronics projects easier than ever. Gone are the days when you had to learn electronics theory and arcane programming before you could even get an LED to blink. Now, with Arduino: A Quick-Start Guide, readers with no electronics experience can create their first gadgets within a few minutes. This book will cover the official Arduino 1.0 release, with step-by-step instructions for building a universal remote, a motion-sensing game controller, and many other fun, useful projects.

See some photos of projects built by our readers over on Flickr. (And if you have photos of your project, please send them to support@pragprog.com).

• WE WILL GO TO PRINT FOR THIS BOOK WHEN ARDUINO 1.0 BECOMES AVAILABLE. IN THE MEANTIME, THE COMPLETE FIRST DRAFT OF THE BOOK IS NOW AVAILABLE IN EBOOK AND BETA-ON-PAPER FORMATS.

Mar 2011

Code in the Cloud

Join the next wave of Web 2.0 software development in the cloud! Cloud applications are the next big shift in application development: instead of building single-user applications to run on a personal computer, new applications are being built as multi-user services that run in data centers around the world. One of the most exciting new environments for building services in the cloud is Google’s AppEngine. AppEngine is a powerful, easy-to-use framework for developing cloud-based services. This book will teach you what you need to make the shift to cloud development using AppEngine.

Nov 2010

Driving Technical Change

Your co-workers’ resistance to new technologies can be baffling. Logical arguments can fail. If you don’t do politics, you will fail. With Driving Technical Change, by Terrence Ryan, you’ll learn to read users’ “patterns of resistance”—and then dismantle their objections. Every developer must master the art of evangelizing. With these techniques and strategies, you’ll help your organization adopt your solutions—without selling your soul to organizational politics.

Oct 2010

Hello, Android

Google’s Android is shaking up the mobile market in a big way. With Android, you can write programs that run on any compatible cell phone in the world. It’s a mobile platform you can’t afford not to learn, and this book gets you started. This third edition covers all Android versions from Android 1.5 to Android 2.

Jul 2010

HTML5 and CSS3

HTML5 and CSS3 are the future of web development, but you don’t have to wait to start using them. Even though the specification is still in development, many modern browsers and mobile devices already support HTML5 and CSS3. This book gets you up to speed on the new HTML5 elements and CSS3 features you can use right now, and backwards compatible solutions ensure that you don’t leave users of older browsers behind.

Oct 2010

iPad Programming

It’s not an iPhone and it’s not a laptop: the iPad is a groundbreaking new device. You need to create true iPad apps to take advantage of all that is possible with the iPad. If you’re an experienced iPhone developer, iPad Programming will show you how to write these outstanding new apps while completely fitting your users’ expectation for this device.

Oct 2010

Pragmatic Guide to Git

Need to learn how to wrap your head around Git, but don’t need a lot of hand holding? Grab this book if you’re new to Git, not to the world of programming. Git tasks displayed on two-page spreads provide all the context you need, without the extra fluff.

NEW: Part of the new Pragmatic Guide series

Nov 2010

Pragmatic Guide to Subversion

Subversion is the most popular open-source version control system on the planet. Development teams-big and small, enterprise and open source-use this fast, feature-rich tool daily. Pragmatic Guide to Subversion presents 48 essential tasks for your Subversion success. Stripping away the exhaustive details of reference books, this guide gives you a shortcut to the Subversion master’s recommended set of best practices. With this book, you can get to the good parts quickly, and be more productive and effective.

NEW: Part of the new Pragmatic Guide series

Nov 2010

Rails Test Prescriptions

Rails Test Prescriptions is a comprehensive guide to testing Rails applications, covering Test-Driven Development from both a theoretical perspective (why to test) and from a practical perspective (how to test effectively). It covers the core Rails testing tools and procedures for Rails 2 and Rails 3, and introduces popular add-ons, including Cucumber, Shoulda, Machinist, Mocha, and Rcov.

Nov 2010

Seven Languages in Seven Weeks

You should learn a programming language every year, as recommended by The Pragmatic Programmer. But if one per year is good, how about Seven Languages in Seven Weeks? In this book you’ll get a hands-on tour of Clojure, Haskell, Io, Prolog, Scala, Erlang, and Ruby. Whether or not your favorite language is on that list, you’ll broaden your perspective of programming by examining these languages side-by-side. You’ll learn something new from each, and best of all, you’ll learn how to learn a language quickly.

Sep 2010

Test Driven Development for Embedded C

Test Driven Development (TDD) is changing how seasoned software developers create and evolve software systems. Instead of coding first and debugging later, test driven developers get feedback every few minutes, ensuring that their code does what they expect. Many C programmers have viewed this practice as impractical for their challenging work. This book shows you how to apply TDD to C, with a focus on the unique challenges facing embedded programmers.

Nov 2010

Test-Drive ASP.NET MVC

It’s testable. It’s light-weight. It’s open-source. It’s . . . Microsoft?

Yes, finally, Microsoft has figured it out. ASP.NET MVC 2.0 lets you test drive your code, control the output of your HTML, and leverage C# and .NET in an easy-to-use web framework. This book shows you all you need to know to get started developing web applications using test-driven development (TDD). You’ll learn how to do everything from creating your first test, to building REST web services, to deploying your finished ASP.NET MVC applications. Test-Drive ASP.NET MVC gets you started with all the fundamentals you need, whether you’re transitioning from older Microsoft technologies, or if you’re coming from an open-source background and are curious about what ASP.NET MVC has to offer.

Jun 2010

The Agile Samurai

Faced with a software project of epic proportions? Tired of over-committing and under-delivering? Enter the dojo of the agile samurai, where agile expert Jonathan Rasmusson shows you how to kick-start, execute, and deliver your agile projects. Combining cutting-edge tools with classic agile practices, The Agile Samurai gives you everything you need to deliver something of value every week and make rolling your software into production a non-event.

Sep 2010

The RSpec Book

Is your team trying to do TDD and failing? Are you finding your test suites bloated and difficult to read, understand, or maintain? Business applications today are plagued with features that are never used, highly coupled code that is hard to change, and expensive test suites that aren’t run any more because they are brittle and unreadable.

RSpec, Ruby’s leading Behaviour Driven Development tool, helps you do TDD right by embracing the design and documentation aspects of TDD. It encourages readable, maintainable suites of code examples that not only test your code, they document it as well. The RSpec Book will teach you how to use RSpec, Cucumber, and other Ruby tools to develop truly agile software that gets you to market quickly and maintains its value as evolving market trends drive new requirements.

Sep 2010

Using JRuby

Ruby has the heart, and Java has the reach. With JRuby, you can bring the best of Ruby into the world of Java. Written in 100% Java, JRuby has Ruby’s expressiveness and wide array of open-source libraries—it’s an even better Ruby. With Using JRuby, the entire JRuby core team helps experienced Java developers and Rubyists exploit the interoperability of their respective languages. With JRuby, you’ll be surprised at what’s now possible.

Nov 2010