The Programmer Aptitude Test (PAT) Passbook(R) prepares you for your test by allowing you to take practice exams in the subjects you need to study.

The contentious history of the computer programmers who developed the software that made the computer revolution possible. This is a book about the computer revolution of the mid-twentieth century and the people who made it possible. Unlike most histories of computing, it is not a book about machines, inventors, or entrepreneurs. Instead, it tells the story of the vast but largely anonymous legions of computer specialists—programmers, systems analysts, and other software developers—who transformed the electronic computer from a scientific curiosity into the defining technology of the modern era. As the systems that they built became increasingly powerful and ubiquitous, these specialists became the focus of a series of critiques of the social and organizational impact of electronic computing. To many of their contemporaries, it seemed the “computer boys” were taking over, not just in the corporate setting, but also in government, politics, and society in general. In The Computer Boys Take Over, Nathan Ensmenger traces the rise to power of the computer expert in modern American society. His rich and nuanced portrayal of the men and women (a surprising number of the “computer boys” were, in fact, female) who built their careers around the novel technology of electronic computing explores issues of power, identity, and expertise that have only become more significant in our increasingly computerized society. In his recasting of the drama of the computer revolution through the eyes of its principle revolutionaries, Ensmenger reminds us that the computerization of modern society was not an inevitable process driven by impersonal technological or economic imperatives, but was rather a creative, contentious, and above all, fundamentally human development.

The evolution of the multi-billion-dollar computer services industry, from consulting and programming to data analytics and cloud computing, with case studies of important companies. The computer services industry has worldwide annual revenues of nearly a trillion dollars and employs millions of workers, but is often overshadowed by the hardware and software products industries. In this book, Jeffrey Yost shows how computer services, from consulting and programming to data analytics and cloud computing, have played a crucial role in shaping information technology—in making IT work. Tracing the evolution of the computer services industry from the 1950s to the present, Yost provides case studies of important companies (including IBM, Hewlett Packard, Andersen/Accenture, EDS, Infosys, and others) and profiles of such influential leaders as John Diebold, Ross Perot, and Virginia Rometty. He offers a fundamental reinterpretation of IBM as a supplier of computer services rather than just a producer of hardware, exploring how IBM bundled services with hardware for many years before becoming service-centered in the 1990s. Yost describes the emergence of companies that offered consulting services, data processing, programming, and systems integration. He examines the development of industry-defining trade associations; facilities management and the firm that invented it, Ross Perot's EDS; time sharing, a precursor of the cloud; IBM's early computer services; and independent contractor brokerages. Finally, he explores developments since the 1980s: the transformations of IBM and Hewlett Packard; the offshoring of enterprises and labor; major Indian IT service providers and the changing geographical deployment of U.S.-based companies; and the paradigm-changing phenomenon of cloud service.

The untold history of women and computing: how pioneering women succeeded in a field shaped by gender biases. Today, women earn a relatively low percentage of computer science degrees and hold proportionately few technical computing jobs. Meanwhile, the stereotype of the male “computer geek” seems to be everywhere in popular culture. Few people know that women were a significant presence in the early decades of computing in both the United States and Britain. Indeed, programming in postwar years was considered woman's work (perhaps in contrast to the more manly task of building the computers themselves). In Recoding Gender, Janet Abbate explores the untold history of women in computer science and programming from the Second World War to the late twentieth century. Demonstrating how gender has shaped the culture of computing, she offers a valuable historical perspective on today's concerns over women's underrepresentation in the field. Abbate describes the experiences of women who worked with the earliest electronic digital computers: Colossus, the wartime codebreaking computer at Bletchley Park outside London, and the American ENIAC, developed to calculate ballistics. She examines postwar methods for recruiting programmers, and the 1960s redefinition of programming as the more masculine “software engineering.” She describes the social and business innovations of two early software entrepreneurs, Elsie Shutt and Stephanie Shirley; and she examines the career paths of women in academic computer science. Abbate's account of the bold and creative strategies of women who loved computing work, excelled at it, and forged successful careers will provide inspiration for those working to change gendered computing culture.

Parallel to the growth of computer usage in society is the growth of programming instruction in schools. This informative volume unites a wide range of perspectives on the study of novice programmers that will not only inform readers of empirical findings, but will also provide insights into how novices reason and solve problems within complex domains. The large variety of methodologies found in these studies helps to improve programming instruction and makes this an invaluable reference for researchers planning studies of their own. Topics discussed include historical perspectives, transfer, learning, bugs, and programming environments.

The computing profession faces a serious gender crisis. Today, fewer women enter computing than anytime in the past 25 years. This book provides an unprecedented look at the history of women and men in computing, detailing how the computing profession emerged and matured, and how the field became male coded. Women's experiences working in offices, education, libraries, programming, and government are examined for clues on how and where women succeeded—and where they struggled. It also provides a unique international dimension with studies examining the U.S., Great Britain, Germany, Norway, and Greece. Scholars in history, gender/women's studies, and science and technology studies, as well as department chairs and hiring directors will find this volume illuminating.

This is an authoritative introduction to Computing Education research written by over 50 leading researchers from academia and the industry.

An accessible, innovative perspective on using the flexibility of agile practices to increase software quality and profitability When agile approaches in your organization don't work as expected or you feel caught in the choice between agility and discipline, it is time to stop and think about software development rhythms! Agile software development is a popular development process that continues to reshape philosophies on the connections between disciplined processes and agile practices. In Software Development Rhythms, authors Lui and Chan explain how adopting one practice and combining it with another builds upon the flexibility of agile practices to create a type of "synergy" defined as software development rhythms. The authors demonstrate how these rhythms can be harmonized to achieve synergies, making them stronger together than they would be apart. Software Development Rhythms provides programmers with a powerful metaphor for resolving some classic software management controversies and dealing with some common difficulties in agile software management. Software Development Rhythms is divided into two parts and covers: Essentials — provides an introduction to software development rhythms; explores the programmer's unconscious mind at work on software methodology; discusses the characteristics of the iterative cycle and open source software development; and introduces the topic of agile values and agile practices Rhythms — compares plagiarism programming with cut-paste programming; provides an in-depth discussion of different ways to approach collaborative programming; demonstrates how to combine and harmonize these practices so they can be applied to common software management problems such as motivating programmers, discovering solution patterns, managing software teams, and rescuing troubled IT projects; and takes a comprehensive look at Scrum, CMMI, Just-In-Time, Lean Software Development, and Test-Driven Development from a software development rhythm perspective Abundantly illustrated with informative graphics and amusing cartoons, Software Development Rhythms is a comprehensive and thought-provoking introduction to some of the most advanced concepts in current software management. Written in a refreshingly easy-to-read style and filled with interesting anecdotes, simulation exercises, and case studies, Software Development Rhythms is suitable for the practitioner and graduate student alike. It offers readers practical guidance on how to take the themes and concepts presented in this book back to their own projects to harmonize their software practices and release the synergies of their own teams.

HR managers are under intense pressure to become strategic business partners. Many, unfortunately, lack the technical skills in financial analysis to succeed in this role. Now, respected HR management educator Dr. Steven Director addresses this skill gap head-on. Writing from HR's viewpoint, Director covers everything mid-level and senior-level HR professionals need to know to formulate, model, and evaluate their HR initiatives from a financial and business perspective. Drawing on his unsurpassed expertise working with HR executives, he walks through each crucial financial issue associated with strategic talent management, including the quantifiable links between workforces and business value, the cost-benefit analysis of HR and strategic financial initiatives, and specific issues related to total rewards programs. Unlike finance books for non-financial managers, Financial Analysis for HR Managers focuses entirely on core HR issues. ¿ More than ever before, HR practitioners must empirically demonstrate a clear link between their practices and firm performance. In Investing in People , Wayne F. Cascio and John W. Boudreau show exactly how to choose, implement, and use metrics to improve decision-making, optimize organizational effectiveness, and maximize the value of HR investments. They provide powerful techniques for looking inside the HR "black box," implementing human capital metrics that track the effectiveness of talent policies and practices, demonstrating the logical connections to financial and line-of-business, and using HR metrics to drive more effective decision-making. Using their powerful "LAMP" methodology (Logic, Analytics, Measures, and Process), the authors demonstrate how to measure and analyze the value of every area of HR that impacts strategic value.