Reviews

The Architecture of Open Source Applications by Greg Wilson, Amy Brown

brycestevenwilley's review

informative slow-paced

3.75

Cons:

• very long. Started and stopped a bit, but still, it's hard to remember it all after 1.4 years of reading, and definitely a slog at times
• quality and engagement of the chapters varies
• you don't quite learn enough about the projects to really understand them. Would need to use each for a few days for the full effect.

Pros:

• some absolute gems: VisTrails, Sendmail, LLVM, and Berkeley DB were particular standouts to me
• all great examples of ARCHITECTURE.md files for a project.
• definitely introduces you to a wide variety of software, for very different audiences 

Suggestion: give each chapter 2 pages to catch your interest, and skip those that start to feel like they drag on

joeyh's review

3.0

Very uneaven, as is typical with this sort of book. Good chapters included llvm, bdb, bash. Too many block diagrams, and if the premise is we're not exposed to enough software architecture, why do I feel I've seen far too many of those? Although bdb used them to good effect showing evolution over time.

Looking forward to the upcoming chapters on git and ghc.

xaviershay's review

3.0

Each chapter is written about a different application by a different author, and the quality varies widely.

The following are worth reading (and available online at http://www.aosabook.org/en/index.html though I read the kindle version):
* Graphite
* LLVM
* Selenium Webdriver
* Python packaging
* SnowFlock

will_sargent's review

3.0

This is a series of essays, and it doesn't have any overarching theme. As such, the result is mixed -- there are some good bits, and some awful bits. Some bits were good just from a historical perspective (i.e. the development of Sendmail) but overall it was not very enlightening.