Beautiful Architecture: Leading Thinkers Reveal the Hidden Beauty in Software Design (Paperback)

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Key Phrases: data store, priv bit, public function evaluate, Free Software, Emacs Lisp, Facebook Platform (more...)

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What are the ingredients of robust, elegant, flexible, and maintainable software architecture? Beautiful Architecture answers this question through a collection of intriguing essays from more than a dozen of today's leading software designers and architects. In each essay, contributors present a notable software architecture, and analyze what makes it innovative and ideal for its purpose. Some of the engineers in this book reveal how they developed a specific project, including decisions they faced and tradeoffs they made. Others take a step back to investigate how certain architectural aspects have influenced computing as a whole. With this book, you'll discover:

How Facebook's architecture is the basis for a data-centric application ecosystem The effect of Xen's well-designed architecture on the way operating systems evolve How community processes within the KDE project help software architectures evolve from rough sketches to beautiful systems How creeping featurism has helped GNU Emacs gain unanticipated functionality The magic behind the Jikes RVM self-optimizable, self-hosting runtime Design choices and building blocks that made Tandem the choice platform in high-availability environments for over two decades Differences and similarities between object-oriented and functional architectural views How architectures can affect the software's evolution and the developers' engagement

Go behind the scenes to learn what it takes to design elegant software architecture, and how it can shape the way you approach your own projects, with Beautiful Architecture.

About the Author

Diomidis Spinellis has been developing the concepts presented in this book since 1985, while also writing groundbreaking software applications and working on multimillion-line code bases. Spinellis holds an M.Eng. degree in software engineering and a Ph.D. in computer science from Imperial College London. Currently he is an associate professor in the Department of Management Science and Technology at the Athens University of Economics and Business.

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Product Details Paperback: 404 pages Publisher: O'Reilly Media; 1 edition (January 29, 2009) Language: English ISBN-10: 059651798X ISBN-13: 978-0596517984 Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.1 x 1.3 inches Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies) Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews) Amazon.com Sales Rank: #53,285 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books) Popular in these categories: (What's this?) #11 in  Books > Computers & Internet > Computer Science > Software Engineering > Design Tools & Techniques #25 in  Books > Computers & Internet > Computer Science > Systems Analysis & Design #28 in  Books > Computers & Internet > Hardware > Design & Architecture

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Diomidis Spinellis

Georgios Gousios

Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!

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Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
data store, priv bit, public function evaluate, latent typing, unboxed types, shadow page tables, applet sandbox, hardware virtual machines, pudding part, image runner, creeping featurism, void speak, render engine, lisp code, domain zero, class bytes, boot image, physical address space, visitor pattern, conceptual integrity, container site, binary translation, application stack, object header, method dictionary

Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Free Software, Emacs Lisp, Facebook Platform, Design Town, New York, Creation Center, Project Darkstar, Thread Weaver, Second Edition, Data Service, Uses Relation, Messy Metropolis, Conway's Law, Module Conceptual, Peyton Jones, Villa Savoye, Uses Structure, Upper Saddle River, Microsoft Windows, Java Virtual Machine, Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software, Structures Versatility, Processing Wait, Information Hiding Module, Prentice Hall

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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!

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	53% buy the item featured on this page: Beautiful Architecture: Leading Thinkers Reveal the Hidden Beauty in Software Design 3.0 out of 5 stars (4) $40.00
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	12% buy Coders at Work 3.9 out of 5 stars (24) $19.79
	11% buy 97 Things Every Software Architect Should Know 3.6 out of 5 stars (17) $23.09

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4 Reviews 5 star:    (0) 4 star:    (0) 3 star:  (4) 2 star:    (0) 1 star:    (0)           Average Customer Review 3.0 out of 5 stars (4 customer reviews)		Share your thoughts with other customers:
Most Helpful Customer Reviews 11 of 12 people found the following review helpful: 3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting idea, poor execution...too many cooks spoiled the broth, March 19, 2009 By  Amrit Tiwana "www.bus.iastate.edu/tiwana" (Decatur, Georgia, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)    The book suffers from a "too many cooks" problem; it is a very timely book but lacks cohesion across chapters. I agree with the other reviewer that it has way too many pages about nothing. This is simply a good example of where each chapter is written by an "authority" on architecture but the chapters are disjointed and lack a consistent message. I loved the title, and idea behind the book, but it overpromises and underdelivers. But there are some redeeming features. However, three chapters are excellent and make up for about a third of the forty dollars that I spent on this book. First, the preface and its discussion of architectural principles and properties is one of the best discussions of those topics. I have not seen that elsewhere. Chapter 1 ("what is architecture") and chapter 2 (a contrast between a system with a messy architecture with another with a thoughtfully designed one) are excellent. Unfortunately, all this interesting content stops on page 43 and very little worth the time reading the remaining 374 pages! I hope that the publisher would come out with a shrunk down 72 pager condensed version of this book that is more like the substance I've come to expect from O'Rielly books. This book is best checked out at your local library. I would instead recommend buying Jan Bosch's older but still unbeatable "Design and Use of Software Architectures" book. 6 of 8 people found the following review helpful: 3.0 out of 5 stars Good topics, Half baked, March 11, 2009 By  Lior Bar-On (Israel) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)    Beautiful Architecture is a collection of articles about architecture. The books starts with a "What is architecture" article (AMAZING! almost any book about architecture has that! can't we finally agree and deprecate this discussion?!) Other articles arrange by topics: enterprise (server) architecture, client architecture, etc... What really annoyed me while reading this book, and lowered two stars for it, is the repeating rhythm of the articles: They start slow and punctuality (That's ok), getting warmer, getting into a really interesting point and puff - suddenly the article ends. It's like making many preparations (warming the oven, preparing raw materials), putting the cake in, but closing it over before the cake is done. Shame! Overall I would buy this book to get leads to new areas, not to really cover it. 1 of 1 people found the following review helpful: 3.0 out of 5 stars Great idea, poor execution..., July 15, 2009 By  Alejandro Espinoza (Irvine, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)    The book's idea is great, but the content is not really focused. For me Architecture is not about coding. Coding is about architecture. But some of the chapters focus too much on technicalities, making it, not only out of topic, but tedious. Not all the chapters are like that, but still it makes the book a bit unfocused and too technical for the average reader. In order to really grasp the full experience from the book you will have to have very deep and low level of knowledge of several disciplines which is unlikely (but not impossible) for the majority of the readers. In my overall opinion the book is a worthy read, the insight from experience is great and the introduction to some very important Open Source Projects can really prove useful.		Ad feedback   Most Recent Customer Reviews 3.0 out of 5 stars The best I read so far, good 3 1/2 stars The books is very solid written and covers the most recent architecture questions. Topics are well laid, very nice covered, but... too many dry and boring words about nothing. Read more Published 8 months ago by Olexiy Prokhorenko Search Customer Reviews Only search this product's reviews

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Product Details

• Paperback: 404 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media; 1 edition (January 29, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 059651798X
• ISBN-13: 978-0596517984
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.1 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #53,285 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in these categories: (What's this?)

  #11 in	Books > Computers & Internet > Computer Science > Software Engineering > Design Tools & Techniques
  #25 in	Books > Computers & Internet > Computer Science > Systems Analysis & Design
  #28 in	Books > Computers & Internet > Hardware > Design & Architecture

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting idea, poor execution...too many cooks spoiled the broth, March 19, 2009

By	Amrit Tiwana "www.bus.iastate.edu/tiwana" (Decatur, Georgia, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The book suffers from a "too many cooks" problem; it is a very timely book but lacks cohesion across chapters. I agree with the other reviewer that it has way too many pages about nothing. This is simply a good example of where each chapter is written by an "authority" on architecture but the chapters are disjointed and lack a consistent message. I loved the title, and idea behind the book, but it overpromises and underdelivers. But there are some redeeming features.

However, three chapters are excellent and make up for about a third of the forty dollars that I spent on this book. First, the preface and its discussion of architectural principles and properties is one of the best discussions of those topics. I have not seen that elsewhere. Chapter 1 ("what is architecture") and chapter 2 (a contrast between a system with a messy architecture with another with a thoughtfully designed one) are excellent. Unfortunately, all this interesting content stops on page 43 and very little worth the time reading the remaining 374 pages!

I hope that the publisher would come out with a shrunk down 72 pager condensed version of this book that is more like the substance I've come to expect from O'Rielly books.

This book is best checked out at your local library. I would instead recommend buying Jan Bosch's older but still unbeatable "Design and Use of Software Architectures" book.

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good topics, Half baked, March 11, 2009

By	Lior Bar-On (Israel) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Beautiful Architecture is a collection of articles about architecture.
The books starts with a "What is architecture" article (AMAZING! almost any book about architecture has that! can't we finally agree and deprecate this discussion?!)
Other articles arrange by topics: enterprise (server) architecture, client architecture, etc...

What really annoyed me while reading this book, and lowered two stars for it, is the repeating rhythm of the articles:
They start slow and punctuality (That's ok), getting warmer, getting into a really interesting point and puff - suddenly the article ends.
It's like making many preparations (warming the oven, preparing raw materials), putting the cake in, but closing it over before the cake is done. Shame!

Overall I would buy this book to get leads to new areas, not to really cover it.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Great idea, poor execution..., July 15, 2009

By	Alejandro Espinoza (Irvine, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The book's idea is great, but the content is not really focused. For me Architecture is not about coding. Coding is about architecture. But some of the chapters focus too much on technicalities, making it, not only out of topic, but tedious. Not all the chapters are like that, but still it makes the book a bit unfocused and too technical for the average reader.

In order to really grasp the full experience from the book you will have to have very deep and low level of knowledge of several disciplines which is unlikely (but not impossible) for the majority of the readers.

In my overall opinion the book is a worthy read, the insight from experience is great and the introduction to some very important Open Source Projects can really prove useful.