To me, a hundred of anything is impressive—be it 100 pushups, which are hard to do all at once; 100 miles, which are hard to walk in a day; even 100 dollars, which, I know, doesn’t buy what it used to. A stack of 100 books is impressive too, and that’s a mark Syncfusion crossed this week with the release of SciPy Programming Succinctly by James McCaffrey, who works for Microsoft Research and has contributed greatly to the Succinctly series as both an author and technical editor.
100 books ago, we endeavored to give .NET developers a quick entryway into other technological domains—starting with titles on jQuery, HTTP, and C++. Each book conveyed all the essential information a developer needs to acclimate quickly to a new development language or tool in approximately 100 pages. McCaffrey not only embraces the Succinctly mission, like so many of our authors, but he executes it with clarity and precision.
SciPy Programming Succinctly facilitates learning by having the reader create and experiment with a sample project. In this excerpt, McCaffrey explains the premise of his teaching:
The approach I take in this e-book is not to present hundreds of one-line SciPy examples. Instead, I’ve tried to pick key examples that give you the knowledge you need to learn SciPy quickly. For example, section 5.4 explains how the normal() function generates random values. Once you understand the normal() function, you can easily figure out how to use the 35 other distribution functions, such as the poisson() and exponential() functions.
Why SciPy? Why Succinctly?
McCaffrey cites data science and machine learning as being two of the fastest growing aspects of software development today. “The Python language, along with the SciPy library, is one of the main tools for data science,” according to McCaffrey. That’s why SciPy Succinctly emphasizes the data science side of SciPy.
Since the mandate of the Succinctly series is to create a meaningful book within 100 pages, authors are asked to scrutinize the essentiality of every snippet of information. “It encourages me to really focus on what’s important and not get distracted by unnecessary details,” said McCaffrey. Screenshots, figures, and sample code listings also expedite the expression of highly technical ideas.
“A huge problem in software development is not that there’s not enough information available, but rather that there’s too much bad information out there,” said McCaffrey. Syncfusion’s Succinctly series was founded on the idea that one expert versed on a given subject could sift through troves of unending information and emerge with a succinct, yet relevant publication—a premise validated by the more than half-a-million readers who have become Succinctly patrons since the publication of book one.
Going Forward
Over the years, as we’ve added to the Succinctly library, our editorial process has been honed, and our writers and editors, all very capable practitioners of their craft, have proven to be excellent communicators of their subjects. Our intent for the future is to expand our breadth of topics, appealing to more readers; update existing titles, to stay on par with ever-evolving technologies; and to hear more from you, dear reader, about the topics you’d like us to cover, and any changes you’d like to see. Send all to succinctly-series@syncfusion.com
