Fundamentals of Software Architecture: An Engineering Approach

Awesome Book!
I read this book as an Associate SE and I gained a ton of knowledge. This book is extremely well written. I enjoyed the order in which the topics were presented. It began with an explanation of the four pillars in software architecture. By doing so readers gain immediate value within the first few pages. I particularly enjoyed the advocation for a domain partitioned folder structure as opposed to a technically partitioned folder structure, especially for front end developers. I believe navigating the code base should very much resemble navigating the UI. This is not only cool for readability, but it inherently increases cohesion. A huge win for such a low cost.After getting the foundations laid the authors explain different architecture styles. The part I found to be most useful was the charts they provided which give star ratings to highlight the strength and weaknesses of each architecture. This illustrates that architecture styles should be chosen for specific solutions and not trends. I gained the skills necessary to begin to think like an architect. It included breadth of knowledge which, as the book will tell you, is much more important than depth of knowledge for an architect. Then the authors decided to dive back in and elaborate a bit more on the foundations learned at the beginning. It suggested ADRs, another quick win for low costs. They also spoke about risks storming and offered friendly advice on finding balance within the teams.All in all, an amazing book. And at the end, the authors even presented tons of short answer questions to challenge readers and really take the lesson home.

An enjoyable read but can be better
Lacking education in software architecture, I’ve always desired to bridge that knowledge gap. I’ve attempted to learn through YouTube videos presented by university professors, but found them lacking. In an effort to enrich my understanding, I purchased this book. The authors, with their vast industry experience, provide invaluable insights. They emphasize the importance of breadth over depth in knowledge for architects and offer advice on navigating office politics to facilitate smooth team integration. The book intriguingly incorporates teachings from the ancient Chinese warrior, Sun Tzu, which I found particularly enlightening. This book has certainly satisfied my curiosity about software architecture.However, I did observe some shortcomings. I was anticipating a comprehensive exploration of a solid software architecture design example, but was disappointed. The book uses the failure of pets.com as a counter-example, and all the discussed cases pertain to web applications, like handling concurrent requests. Since software isn’t exclusively about web apps, I found this to be a limitation. My personal project involves building a trading platform, and unfortunately, the book didn’t provide much insight for this kind of venture, for which I had to deduct a point.As for the physical quality of the book, O’Reilly consistently delivers. The book feels good to hold and is printed in black and white. This isn’t a problem, as all the images are legible without the need for color.

Covered the material well & leveled up my understanding
I read this book front to back and it solidified my understanding of a lot of architectural concepts. Now I’m better at understanding and communicating the architectural concerns of the systems I work on.If you’re wondering where the blurry lines around architecture are, this book will help you build the mental model you’re missing.Great writing, I’m keeping it as a reference book.

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