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Release It!: Design and Deploy Production-Ready Software (Pragmatic Programmers) (Pragmatic Programmers)
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Release It!: Design and Deploy Production-Ready Software (Pragmatic Programmers) (Pragmatic Programmers) |
Author: Michael Nygard
Published: 2007-03-30 |
List price: $34.95
Our price: $20.97
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Usually ships in 24 hours
As of: September 06th, 2008 12:19:28 AM
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Customer comments on this selection.
 Interesting, but inconsistent
This is a book of advices on how to make the system running. Not just to write and release it (no pun intended), but to keep it running after the release.
The book is about prior planning for capacity and stability, designing systems capable of handling the load while being resilient and fault-tolerant, build it in a maintainable and adaptable way, so that it lives through the years. A great deal of information in it too.
Overall, it was a pleasant reading, because in most parts it matches precisely what I'm doing on my job and what I've learned to be the right way of doing through hard experience. As always, such practical convergence with published material is very comforting.
Why did I give it 4 stars then ?
Because the book itself needs more work.
It is poorly structured and is stylistically informal. It doesn't have a plot, but it is also not a collection of independent essays or articles. Near the end it feels like the author just gave up the structure and stuffed the book with random thoughts.
Despite the author's promise for each part of the book to have a case study, only 3 out of the 4 unconnected book parts are opened with one, and the studies are of anecdotal nature. A few pages of horror in everybody's eyes to find out that a janitor had accidentally pulled the plug, something like that.
As the few architectural patterns suggested by the author reside near the middle of the book, the first half is full of forward references, like "but wait till you see the MagicPattern !". The patterns when you encounter them are useful but are explained shortly and in informal manner again.
A lot of assorted hints, ranging from TCP handshaking to stripping whitespace off web pages and wrapping a web service around a database. Interesting, but inconsistent.
It is difficult for me to be unbiased about a book like that, because, like I said, it correctly describes many of the practical considerations that I already knew in the first place.
I'd say it is the kind of book for the architects with development past. It will be useless for you unless you have a lot of practical experience as a developer. On the other hand, if you are a beginning developer, it won't help much either because it doesn't offer any analysis or any kind of formal textbook kind of information.
Sound Advice
Release It!: Design and Deploy Production-Ready Software (Pragmatic Programmers) (Pragmatic Programmers)
This book offers very sound advice, based upon Author's years of experience. Every serious developer/architect should own it. The only reason why I gave it 4 stars is that the book is devoid of code; it would have been % star plus, book had Author put some code samples there (even pseudo code or more diagrams).
Must read for any web software engineer
Unlike many books (such as those with animal kingdom on their cover or photos of several programmers) this book is by/for a real software engineer with real life production ailments and antidotes for them. Even if all the use cases discussed here may not be applicable, if people follow at least 50% of those that apply I think there will less business outages, better user experience and a happier IT department.
On top of all the good technical stuff, this book also happens to be well written - enough to be just enjoyed for the anecdotes and such.
A must read for any software engineer of web applications!
A Book to have on Your Bookshelf
I just completed reading Release It! by Michael T. Nyggard (Pragmatic Bookshelf 2007). It is part of The Pragmatic Programmers series. I have read the book cover to cover twice. At first, I thought that the book was just another book on how to manage projects. So What! The ideas presented in the book were common sense. I have been doing these same things for many years.
Then one day I was working on a project, and was trying to figure out how to handle a problem. I remembered what I read in Release It! about the topic. I grabbed the book off the bookshelf and looked it up; logging. The ideas presented are common sense, but how often have we missed to boat. The ideas presented in the book I implemented much to my own joy. The result was a customized deployment of the Java Logging system which is simple to maintain and does not require external libraries.
It was at that point I realized the brilliance of the book and the pragmatic side of things. I re-read the book. As an architect, project manager, developer, and maintainer of complex software ecosystems, the ideas in the book provide a "pragmatic" common sense approach to handling situations. The book is a learning tool, one person's personal perspective on software design and deployment, and a reference. It is an all-in-one book.
This book provides a great tutorial on how to manage complex projects for the novice, and a gentle practical reminder to the seasoned architect/project manager.
The book is divided into 4 major sections: Stability, Capacity, General Design Issues, and Operations. The first two sections provide the basis for the remainder of the book. The Stability and Capacity sections have divided the topic into an explanation, followed by general design patterns and anti-patterns. It explains in enough detail how to implement good patterns and recognize bad ones.
The section on General Design covers items like Administration and Security. There is nothing earth shattering in these sections, but they do provide a basis for a "check list" of items to make sure you consider in your designs.
The final section on Operations is the one where you will make friends with your administrators and keep your sanity. The portions on designing for monitoring including logging will be your savior at 2:00 AM in the middle of a blizzard. The discussion on designing for the future does not get enough attention in our modern get it out the door now world. This may be the push you need to think about it.
This is a book to have on your bookshelf. Mine is full of tabs and post-it notes.
 Absolute *Must Have*
There are dozens of technical books on my bookshelf, most of them quite good... but none as relevant and valuable an addition as Release It! If you are a professional involved in the development, deployment, and production support of modern information systems it is in your interest to get a copy of this book and (unlike many a technical manual) *actually read it*
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