Reviews

Designing Data-Intensive Applications by Martin Kleppmann

blacking13's review against another edition

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5.0

In additional to content, book has bunch of useful references for deep dive(especially digital version). Spent 70% of reading references.

antontsvetkov's review against another edition

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5.0

A broad overview of both problem space and solution space, covering use cases and concepts of data-intensive & distributed systems with relevant examples. Perfect if you want to see the bigger picture and understand the "whys" of solutions and tradeoffs.

queen_perfection's review

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informative slow-paced

5.0

lance888's review against another edition

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informative slow-paced

5.0

libellum_aphrodite's review against another edition

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4.0

Part 1 gives a great overview of distributed systems techniques and trade-offs.

Part 2 goes really deep into database partitioning, replication, etc. Abundance of details.

Part 3 particularly got deeper into the weeds on things like clock skew than particularly served my systems design interview prep purposes, but I can certainly appreciate the thoroughness.

Overall, excellent dive on passing data around distributed systems.

dashtaisen's review against another edition

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challenging informative medium-paced

5.0

"Designing Data-Intensive Applications" was on my list for a while. I liked it, and I will definitely read it again. The book covers different types of system designs, and the pros and cons of each. There are specific examples of use cases and technologies, but mostly this is a book about architectures. I think that's a good approach, because specific technologies have come and gone, but the tradeoffs are mostly still relevant. And to be honest, given that big institutions can be slow to change, even the specific technologies and approaches in this book might remain relevant for a while.

I was pleasantly surprised to see a discussion of ethics in the conclusion. Of course I would have liked to see more of that, but the example of seeing what happens when you take a description of your tool and replace "data" with "surveillance" was pretty compelling.

The material in this book would be *excellent* inspiration for technical interviews -- much better than LeetCode or any of the popular whiteboard algorithm exercise books.

Unlike the vast majority of books in this genre, I enjoyed the writing. The material is not easy, but the writing style is straightforward and accessible. And the author is not afraid to make explicit connections to previous concepts. I am sure that some people will find that unnecessarily repetitive, but I thought it was done appropriately. There were a couple of historical tangents that I thought could have been shorter.

bookwyrm420's review against another edition

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challenging medium-paced

5.0

julissadantes's review against another edition

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informative

5.0

This book is of high quality and could serve as a valuable resource for students pursuing a career in, or professionals of software engineering.

perfi's review against another edition

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informative inspiring medium-paced

4.75

stag1e's review against another edition

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5.0

Very well written - clear, easy to understand, lucid. Filled some gaps in my knowledge. The last section made me really think about the world we're going towards and the whole information age.