
The Architecture of Open Source Applications - kachnuv_ocasek
http://www.aosabook.org/en/index.html
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acangiano
"Architects look at thousands of buildings during their training, and study
critiques of those buildings written by masters. In contrast, most software
developers only ever get to know a handful of large programs well — usually
programs they wrote themselves — and never study the great programs of
history. As a result, they repeat one another’s mistakes rather than building
on one another’s successes. This book’s goal is to change that."

Excellent point.

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wallflower
"How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They're Built " by Stewart Brand (of
Whole Earth fame). Highly recommend it. I've lost track of how many copies
(10?) I've given as gifts to friends.

TLDR: The bones of a building determine how adaptable it is to reskinning and
structural change. If you don't have the right bones, you will have to tear
the building down and it will not adapt over time. Adaptable systems have a
backbone that lets them be stable during change.

[http://www.amazon.com/How-Buildings-Learn-Happens-
Theyre/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/How-Buildings-Learn-Happens-
Theyre/dp/0140139966)

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codeslush
Better title: "A must read for anyone involved in software development!"

I wonder if this will become required reading for CS students?

I haven't read the entire contents, but browsed through a few of the chapters.
REALLY GREAT WORK! Very interesting lessons learned and just overall review of
choices made with some of these apps. I'll definitely come back to this and
finish reading.

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presty
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2704765>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2619553>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2598643>

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rbranson
Going to be pedantic and say that the NoSQL section is a bit off saying
Dynamo-like systems "shard." This carries with it the connotation that the
distributed aspects of the database are an afterthought or an add-on feature.

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swlkr
It's free but I bought a copy anyway. The first paragraph was all I needed to
see.

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hexagonc
I was hooked on the section covering Berkeley DB design and will be
recommending this to pretty much all the developer friends I know. I even put
up with registering on Lulu to pay for the PDF version. I am so sick of
registering for things and creating new accounts, although I saw it as a
necessary evil in this case. Can federated identity get here any sooner?

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limist
Excellent. The book has a hacker's dedication too: "Dedicated to Brian
Kernighan, who has taught us all so much; and to prisoners of conscience
everywhere."

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gwern
When I saw that, I rather wondered what the conjunction was supposed to imply;
I still wonder.

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angrycoder
The proceeds for the book go to amnesty international.

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stephth
This is an such an awesome initiative. But it could do with more games. I'm
surprised that none of the open source Quake engines are in there.

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buro9
Available on Kindle too, nice as my programmer bookshelf is becoming a little
heavy.

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schiptsov
YACPB - Yet Another Copy-n-Paste Book.. ^_^

