Software Architecture: The Hard Parts • Neal Ford & Mark Richards • GOTO 2023

Neal Ford and Mark Richards discuss the difficult trade-offs and compromises involved in designing distributed software architectures.

This interview was recorded for the GOTO Book Club. #GOTOcon #GOTObookclub gotopia.tech/bookclub Read the full transcription of the interview here: gotopia.tech/bookclub/episodes/213 Neal Ford - Software Consultant at Thoughtworks & Co-Author of "Software Architecture: The Hard Parts @thoughtworks Mark Richards - Hands-On Software Architect, Independent Consultant & Co-Author of "Software Architecture: The Hard Parts @markrichards5014 DESCRIPTION There are no easy decisions in software architecture. Instead, there are many hard parts--difficult problems or issues with no best practices--that force you to choose among various compromises. With this book, you'll learn how to think critically about the trade-offs involved with distributed architectures. Architecture veterans and practicing consultants Neal Ford, Mark Richards, Pramod Sadalage, and Zhamak Dehghani discuss strategies for choosing an appropriate architecture. By interweaving a story about a fictional group of technology professionals--the Sysops Squad--they examine everything from how to determine service granularity, manage workflows and orchestration, manage and decouple contracts, and manage distributed transactions to how to optimize operational characteristics, such as scalability, elasticity, and performance. By focusing on commonly asked questions, this book provides techniques to help you discover and weigh the trade-offs as you confront the issues you face as an architect. • Analyze trade-offs and effectively document your decisions • Make better decisions regarding service granularity • Understand the complexities of breaking apart monolithic applications • Manage and decouple contracts between services • Handle data in a highly distributed architecture • Learn patterns to manage workflow and transactions when breaking apart applications * Book description: © O’Reilly: oreilly.com/library/view/software-architecture-the/978149208… The interview is based on Neal's & Mark's co-authored book "Software Architecture: The Hard Parts": amzn.to/3QeMgjR TIMECODES 00:00 Intro 04:25 Rubber band 08:36 Writing the book 12:10 Feedback loop 16:32 Trade-off analysis & distributed architectures 21:20 Turning abstract concepts into concrete examples 33:18 Transactional sagas 38:42 Conclusion 41:22 Outro RECOMMENDED BOOKS Ford, Richards, Sadalage & Dehghani • Software Architecture: The Hard Parts • amzn.to/3QeMgjR Mark Richards & Neal Ford • Fundamentals of Software Architecture • amzn.to/3wMBhoI Ford, Parsons, Kua & Sadalage • Building Evolutionary Architectures 2nd Edition • amzn.to/3lqr5Q8 Ford, Parsons & Kua • Building Evolutionary Architectures • amzn.to/3l0IOh2 Neal Ford • Functional Thinking • amzn.to/3l6ND8M Nick Tune & Jean-Georges Perrin • Architecture Modernization • amzn.to/4b5ASiN Michael Nygard • Release It! 2nd Edition • amzn.to/3WJeKV8 Gene Kim & John Willis • Beyond The Phoe