I recently did what I rarely do: buy and read an educational book. Shocking, I know, but I can assure you that I’m fine 😉

The book I ordered is Clean Architecture – A Craftsman’s Guide to Software Structure and Design by Robert C. Martin. As the title suggests it is about software architecture.

I’ve barely read half of the book, but I’ve already learned a ton! I find it curious that as a halfway decent programmer, I often more or less know what Martin is talking about when he is describing a certain architectural pattern, but I often didn’t know said pattern had a name, or what consequences using said pattern really implied. It is really refreshing to see the bigger picture and having all the pros and cons of certain design decisions layed out in an overview.

One important point the book is trying to put across is how important it is to distinguish between important things like business rule, and not so important things as details. Let me try to give you an example.

Lets say I want to build a reactive Android XMPP chat application using Smack (foreshadowing? 😉 ). Lets identify the details. Surely Smack is a detail. Even though I’d be using Smack for some of the core functionalities of the app, I could just as well chose another XMPP library like babbler to get the job done. But there are even more details, Android for example.

In fact, when you strip out all the details, you are left with reactive chat application. Even XMPP is a detail! A chat application doesn’t care, what protocol you use to send and receive messages, heck it doesn’t even care if it is run on Android or on any other device (that can run java).

I’m still not quite sure, if the keyword reactive is a detail, as I’d say it is a more a programming paradigm. Details are things that can easily be switched out and/or extended and I don’t think you can easily replace a programming paradigm.

The book does a great job of identifying and describing simple rules that, when applied to a project lead to a cleaner, more structured architecture. All in all it teaches how important software architecture in general is.

There is however one drawback with the book. It constantly wants to make you want to jump straight into your next big project with lots of features, so it is hard to keep reading while all that excited ;P

If you are a software developer – no matter whether you work on small hobby projects or big enterprise products, whether or not you pursue to become a Software Architect – I can only recommend reading this book!

One more thought: If you want to support a free software project, maybe donating books like this is a way to contribute?

Happy Hacking!