Distilled: Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture

Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture

Author: Martin Fowler

“Always remember that every pattern is incomplete and that you have the responsibility, and the fun, of completing it in the context of your own system.”

Review & Thoughts

Reference books are categorically uninteresting. They are traditionally bland and utilitarian; antithetical to engaging literature. Their true value lies in their concreteness, structure, and educational density. Reference books are unrivaled in these qualities. They are typically packed with chapter after chapter of hyper-focused knowledge transfer. Each chapter, due to its brevity and independence, makes great material for study and group discussion.

The Achilles’ heel of the reference genre is lack of context. It is notoriously difficult to grok 800 pages of solutions for problems you don’t have and don’t understand. Perhaps the most viable strategy is to skim through each chapter, committing as much high-level substance as possible to your long-term memory, and hoping your recall will kick in at some opportune moment in the future. If and when that recall triggers, you can dive deeply into the area of interest. Pair that strategy with a deck of flashcards and…