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A Philosophy of Software Design Paperback – April 6, 2018

by John Ousterhout (Author)

14 customer reviews

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This book addresses the topic of software design: how to decompose complex software systems into modules (such as classes and methods) that can be implemented relatively independently. The book first introduces the fundamental problem in software design, which is managing complexity. It then discusses philosophical issues about how to approach the software design process, and it presents a collection of design principles to apply during software design. The book also introduces a set of red flags that identify design problems. You can apply the ideas in this book to minimize the complexity of large software systems, so that you can write software more quickly and cheaply.

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John K. Ousterhout

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$34.70

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

John Ousterhout is the Bosack Lerner Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University. His current research focuses on new software stack layers to allow datacenter applications to take advantage of communication and storage technologies with microsecond-scale latencies. Ousterhout's prior positions include 14 years in industry, where he founded two companies (Scriptics and Electric Cloud), preceded by 14 years as Professor of Computer Science at U.C. Berkeley. He is the creator of the Tcl scripting language and is also well known for his work in distributed operating systems and storage systems. Ousterhout received a BS degree in Physics from Yale University and a PhD in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and has received numerous awards, including the ACM Software System Award, the ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award, the National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator Award, and the U.C. Berkeley Distinguished Teaching Award.

Paperback: 190 pages
Publisher: Yaknyam Press; 1 edition (April 6, 2018)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1732102201
ISBN-13: 978-1732102200
Product Dimensions: 6.5 x 0.4 x 8 inches
Shipping Weight: 10.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 14 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,767 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #46 in Books > Computers & Technology > Programming

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Outstanding

August 27, 2018

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Thank you John Ousterhout for this book! I just finished reading it today.

I love that this book focuses on reducing complexity. It gives very practical ways that I can reduce complexity in my software.

The author puts such a high value value on simplicity and it's so refreshing when so many of today's "best practices" lead to complexity.

This book is helping me become more design oriented and strategic -- and less of a "tactical tornado".

This books stays relatively high level and is philisophical, which makes it an easy read. There are practical examples, but not too many that it disrupts the flow.

I am going to buy moe copies for my team. I would highly recommend it to any developer or manager.

5 people found this helpful

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Patrick

Excellent Reference on Design Principles - Easy to Read and Easy to Review

August 15, 2018

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Short and sweet. If you write software you should read this book.

About myself - no formal on the job software design training (worked as a PM not an engineer). No undergrad course that focused *primarily* on design. I'm starting to work on a few larger projects and I'm stoked I read this book when I did.

4 people found this helpful

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Allan Wind

Perhaps suitable for entry level engineers?

September 11, 2018

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It may be suited for entry entry level engineers, and they find it an interesting read. I didn't learned anything, I am afraid, and was irritated at times when I disagreed with authors opinion that was being passed off as facts.

What bothered me the most is the lack of rigor, for instance, he advocates for incremental design which costs 10-20% and if you don't it will make you 10%-20% slower after some point. The only motivation a graph with no units. It may matter if is 10% or 20%, as that is after all a factor of 2. Also, it's not really clear that once in a while 10% investment, let's call it 45 minutes is a very different cost than a recurring daily 45 minute overhead due to cost being a mess. I don't have any data to dispute the numbers, btw, but on the other hand, I have not seen any studies to support it either, and the author does not tell us where he is getting this from.

His advise of avoiding lots of small functions as it means you will be bouncing all over the place to understand the code is not necessarily wrong. It adds lots of boiler plate, for example. Using an argument from the book itself, however, you could argue that good names and comments would mean you didn't need to read those lower level functions. The counter argument is that smaller functions are much easier to unit test. Then you have the unit test vs integration test discussion of course.

There are 3 chapters on comments. Why?! I am towards the "good code is self-documenting" end of the spectrum, although I would say a lot of comments is often (but certainly not always) a code smell that suggest refactoring using better names, extracting code to function etc. I do like how he describes good comments as either lower or higher level than the code.

The text editor example that runs through most of the book becomes trite. What I find way more interesting is when he talks about his experience with TCL (design mistakes, or the benefits derived from unit test suite), or towards the end RAMCloud and a specific implementation detail.

10 people found this helpful

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Michael J. Mcdermott

Top 5 Book on Writing Software

August 31, 2018

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As a software engineer, a manger of 20 software engineers, and someone who has mentored dozens of software engineers, I'm putting this on the must read list for everyone who wants to earn how to think about designing software. I just ordered one for the whole team and will set up an in work book club with time away from projects so folks can really focus on the book.

The book is well written, well organized, and succinct with solid examples.

5 people found this helpful

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hellokitty

An OO lover's biased perspective on software design

September 10, 2018

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This book does not consider functional programming, or the fact that terrible software in modern times is often the result of layers of incorrect abstraction that are often induced by the overuse of "object oriented" (OO) programming techniques. Instead, it takes OO programming for granted as being a good thing (visible in its preferences for two OO languages, C++ and Java), and then it reasons in that domain, making it totally uninteresting to many potential readers. The book also assumes that formal design doesn't work (he calls it "waterfall"), and takes alternatives for granted. I doubt the author is even aware of his inherent bias, but it is incredibly strong.

10 people found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

Amazing Book

August 23, 2018

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This book is really great, There is great wisdom in the book. it challenges common ideas we learn in Frameworks, Java and Clean Code. Th book is a must read for any real engineer. The notion of FAT classes is really great and makes lots of sense also as the idea of strategic programming.

3 people found this helpful

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Metalstar

Great Book

October 8, 2018

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Its a great book. Its hard to get through, with some really simple and straightforward style composition, but its an excellent perspective to master.

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Yang, Chul-woong

To like programming again,

August 28, 2018

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As a experienced programmer, the author tells us a story of how to make a maintainable software.

Software should be simple enough to be understood and maintained by ordinary people.
It should be read easily without cognitive burden. We should exercise proper abstraction to reduce complexity.
Since complexity sums up, we should take "zero tolerance" approach while programming.

This book does not provide any design pattern. There is no hard-to-understand topic at all.
The author gives us his practical and sincere advice that looks so simple but is not easy to practice consistently.
He likes programming really! I know it. He wants to share his experience with us.

I recommend this book to working programmers who want to like programming, again.

4 people found this helpful

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