In italian we have this fun saying" "Dalle stelle alle stalle" which can be translated to "From the stars to the stables" meaning going from brilliant and promising beginnings to a low and humbling ending.. well I find that it describes perfectly this book. Writing a bad tech book is already a mortal sin without making things even worse by raising reader's expectations with a pompous title like "tackling complexity in the heart of sofware". The only thing that this book tackles is the patience of the reader forced to wade through a sea of fluff to find the few interesting ideas that are actually present. It's not that this book contains zero value, it does present some interesting ideas, but the level, usefulness and impact of these ideas are barely enough to justify a series of blog posts, not a book and certainly not a 500 pages book! Add to this lack of structure and organization, continuous repetitions and a pompousness beyond imagination with the annoying habit of continually uppercasing or bolding the "important ideas" and inventing pompous sounding name for simple concepts in the vain attempt to hide their triviality and you will have an idea of the torments that await you if you buy this book and attempt to read it.
The truly facinating question is: "how did this barely decent series of blog posts manage to get so popular and receive respect and good reviews?". I think the answer lies on its cover. It's like with modern art and abstract painting... some guy puts together something kind of original or vaguely interesting or just plain strange, a couple of critics start praising its outstanding aestetics and deep meaning for personal reasons of just as a way to praise themselves who are the only ones able to discern such beauty and meaning , they present the work in an elegant and "important" location and well.. the rest of us deep inside still think it 's fried air, but we still go to the exhibit and dare not say so, since well.. if it's so higly regarded there must be a reason, and maybe it's just that I am not good enough to get it... That's why the best qualification for this book and the attitude it promotes "kandinskian". A (hopefully) failed attempt to transfer to software design and development the horrors of art criticism.
And to the author and whoever shares his love for pompous sounding words and names (or as he would say it: "UBIQUITOUS LANGUAGE") I would advise to reflect on this Feynman quote:
"You can know the name of a bird in all the languages of the world, but when you're finished, you'll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird... So let's look at the bird and see what it's doing -- that's what counts. I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something."
Thoughtful and relevant
Must read for software architects. Book is well organized and written. Concepts are useful in everyday analysis, design, and implementation.
Also, excellent editing and layout. Always nice to find!
An excellent reference, another must read for developers
Through this book Evan's shares his extensive development and consulting experience as he outlines his approach to Domain Driven Design (DDD) - DDD being the development approach that Evan's has had the most success with. Evan's writing style is easy to read as he maintains a comfortable conversational tone while pragmatically guiding us through the many patterns and concepts that encompass Domain Driven Design. However; be warned the concepts that lie within are occasionally dense, abstract, but ultimately enlightening as Evan's forces us to look at development from a new perspective.
It's fair to mention that this book has been charged as being just another patterns book, and while I sympathize with those reviewers - some concepts do come across as being overly abstract without clear implementations (code) to reference. I found this book to be an insightful window into the mind of an experienced developer, and not just another patterns book. If you do find yourself grasping for more concrete implementations then you'll want to read Jimmy Nilsson's Applying Domain-Driven Design and Patterns: With Examples in C# and .NET book too - Nilsson's book provides many code examples while directly referencing Evan's text.
As a developer or an emerging architect you won't want to overlook this book. From my experience the concepts and patterns surrounding Domain Driven Design frequently crop up in Service Orientation, MVC/MVP Web Applications, Object Orientation, Test Driven Development, Model Driven Development, and other modern best practices. I highly recommend this book, it's a great reference to have alongside Steve McConnell's Code Complete, Robert Glass's Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering, and the Martin Fowler blessed books too.
The Software Design Book in the Age of Refactoring and XP
Eric Evans teaches how to model a range of business domains and the corresponding software in lockstep. This is an important and heavy subject. One has to step through unfamiliar domains. And one steps through them before they are properly explained, due to a not yet existent good model. Consequently one has to cope with bad descriptions of domains. Even more, you may not be very interested in most of the example domains. This is inherent to the subject matter and unavoidable.
The book reads similar to Martin Fowler's excellent pattern books. Both authors know how to explain an important and difficult subject. But be prepared for quite some hard work wading through the 500 plus pages. Your reward will be well worth it.
Excellent
It is on top of every thing else. It is a recipe of how to build domain applications underlining the design patterns and its relations that work best.
