Customer Reviews

A Software Architecture Primer

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A Software Architecture Primer beautifully describes a small set of light-weight practices that can streamline and systematize your software design process without bogging you down in a beureaucratic process.

Usually when I think of software engineering process, I think of a set of burdensome tasks that drag me down and make it more difficult to explore or change my design. Each design change can result in hours or days updating countless documents, recommunicating those changes in reviews, and so on. At the same time, it is usefult to have a structure for fleshing out a software design and communicating it to your team.

In contrast to most other authors I've read in this space, Reekie and McAdam realize that there is a tension between process (structure) and getting real work done. So rather than going on and on about the minutiae of different software design formalisms and whatnot, they clearly and succinctly describe a set of techniques and exercises that will help you systematically design better software and communicate your design to others without slowing you down. This is the first software architecture book that I will actually put to practice in my next software project, rather than picking and choosing from the huge body of literature in this space.

As this book describes, there is a variety of complexity in building physical structures. A lot less design and planning is needed to build a doghouse than a home for people, and a lot less is needed to build a home than a skyscraper.

I suspect that many computer science students emerge from their university studies fully prepared to build a doghouse; that is, small, straight-forward computer programs. The coding and algorithm knowledge they have may well be adequate for larger projects, but perhaps inadequate is their understanding of how to plan for larger projects. This book helps the reader to better realize what to think about as they embark on larger projects.

I wish I had studied this book while I was in college, but it hadn't been written then, and even if it had been, I probably wouldn't have understood why its content was important. I certainly understand its importance now, and would recommend it to anyone who is currently working, or desires to work, in a software development role where upfront design is useful.

It is a helpful source for Software Architecture beginners like students.
The book hasn't gone through details so I could get the software architecture concepts more clearly.
Babak