Software architects guide development teams during projects from design to completion. It’s a notoriously nebulous field where the only goal is to build successful software… whatever that means and whatever that takes. Like any ill-defined field, getting from point A to point B requires skill and wisdom. That skill and wisdom evolves over time as the field evolves. Mark Richards and Neal Ford attempt to provide a guide to being a software architect without tying their approach too closely to any one technology.
The authors succeed in their goal of writing for the general audience of software designers, regardless of programing language; however, they fail to meet their audience at the same time because they are highly wedded to the design of microservices, their expertise. A lot of complex software development today doesn’t use microservices, and this book contains a lot of material that is only tangentially relevant to that crowd. Their work sees software through the lens of microservices versus monoliths, and in my experience, that contrast simply isn’t foundational to many developers.
Of course, we’re all biased towards our own areas, but the authors could have investigated this topic with a more scholarly approach that balanced other paradigms. The final sections on the interpersonal aspects of a software architect’s work life are helpful. I’d suggest that they’d serve as a better unifying theme to the topic and should be covered first. Then perhaps the authors could convey what architecture patterns exist in different development domains like web development, microservices, embedded systems, etc. The world of software is exploding with diverse approaches to a wide array of problems, and I’m still looking for a good book on software architecture to unite them. This book, while certainly solid, is more of a specialist’s guide to microservices than a grand tutorial.
Fundamentals of Software Architecture: An Engineering Approach
By Mark Richards & Neal Ford
Narrated by Benjamin Lange
Copyright (c) 2021
Upfront Books
ASIN B08X8H15BW
Length: 13:10
Genre: Software
www.amazon.com