Book review: microservice patterns

content/reviews/books/microservice-patterns.md

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+title = "Microservice Patterns, Chris Richardson"
+date = 2019-10-09
+
+[taxonomies]
+tags = ["books", "review", "microservices", "spring", "java"]
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+
+[GoodReads summary](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34372564-microservice-patterns):
+Microservice Patterns teaches enterprise developers and architects how to
+build applications with the microservice architecture. Rather than simply
+advocating for the use the microservice architecture, this clearly-written
+guide takes a balanced, pragmatic approach. You'll discover that the
+microservice architecture is not a silver bullet and has both benefits and
+drawbacks. Along the way, you'll learn a pattern language that will enable you
+to solve the issues that arise when using the microservice architecture. This
+book also teaches you how to refactor a monolithic application to a
+microservice architecture.
+
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+
+{{ stars(stars=1) }}
+
+I have a rule: The "badness" of a book is directly proportional to the number
+of "as follows" the author uses in it.
+
+And, oh boy, do they use "as follows" in this book (no, seriously).
+
+The first 1/4 of the book is pretty good, showing patterns and giving
+explanations about it. The rest of the book is strongly focused on external
+frameworks and libraries and has almost no patterns discussion at all -- for
+example, the second 1/4 is, basically, focused on the author's framework -- a
+Java framework. . Also, the author seems strongly focused on Java code, even
+after explaining that a microservice fleet can be written in lots of different
+languages -- even listing some languages.
+
+There is a strong preference for Java and Spring on the book, to the point
+that, when discussing a point, it shows a Spring module with a huge
+explanation on what it does and another saying, simply, "another Java
+framework".
+
+The code examples are also bad. It seems the author decided to use IntelliJ as
+IDE and use its variable-name-generator (based on the class name) to create
+the variable names. Classes names are really long on Java and, using the IDE,
+the variables names <i>also</i> get really long, which by itself is not bad,
+but in a book, it means the code will get formatted like any text and, thus,
+get completely broken, and really hard to read.
+
+There are <i>lots</i> of images. And, as usual with a lot of images, 90% of
+them are completely irrelevant, adding absolutely nothing of whatever was
+described already.
+
+Those failures are extremely upsetting. You're getting a book about patterns
+and end up with lots of pages of discussion and code -- badly formatted code
+-- and very little pattern. Instead of explaining each pattern in depth, the
+author decided to skip the whole thing and just show you how to use some
+framework that already implements the pattern. That, by itself, isn't bad, but
+without understanding what the pattern is, and what it is good for, you won't
+know if it is a good idea to use it or not -- because patterns are ways to
+describe your solution, not "ready made" solutions.
+
+Honestly, I can't recommend this book for anyone that is starting their way
+into microservices.