architecture

The best part of the book was section 2, where it described different architecture styles and gave each one star ratings across a variety of characteristics, which I’m sure come from the authors’ experience with each style. I also liked how it framed microservices as part of a trend pendulum, reacting against the reuse pain that SOA left behind, since I like noticing when a new trend is really just correcting for the last one’s mistakes. I’m not an architect currently, so I have no need for architecture decision records (ADRs), except maybe for technical decisions made on personal projects so I can go back and remember the thought that went into them. I may start using adr-tools on my own for that. Since I mostly listened to this on runs, my notes don’t really do it justice. I want to go back sometime when I’m not out of breath and write proper summaries of the ratings for each architecture style. ...

I first read The Pragmatic Programmer years ago, and the 20th anniversary edition holds up really well. It isn’t just a nostalgia lap, since the updates feel necessary, folding in ideas like ETC (“Easier to Change”), functional-style data pipelines, and more modern concurrency patterns without losing the voice that made the original a classic. It reads less like a list of rules and more like advice from people who have actually shipped things and learned from what went wrong. ...

I didn’t find a lot of the advice in this book terribly useful. It mostly seemed like common sense backed by a bit of research. The onboarding advice was probably the most useful part, if only because I’m senior enough now that it might come in handy with junior colleagues. The idea is basically to focus on single activities at first, starting with concrete code instead of diagrams, and remembering that everything is new to them. It is easy to forget once you’ve been steeped in a codebase for years. ...