, , , , ,

Clean Architecture: A Craftsman’s Guide to Software Structure and Design

(21 customer reviews)

$37.99

Author       :  Robert C. Martin

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Pearson; 1st edition (September 10, 2017)

Language ‏ : ‎ English

Paperback ‏ : ‎ 432 pages

ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0134494164

ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0134494166

Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 3.99 ounces

Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 0.8 x 6.9 x 9 inches

Practical Software Architecture Solutions from the Legendary Robert C. Martin (“Uncle Bob”)

 

By applying universal rules of software architecture, you can dramatically improve developer productivity throughout the life of any software system. Now, building upon the success of his best-selling books Clean Code and The Clean Coder, legendary software craftsman Robert C. Martin (“Uncle Bob”) reveals those rules and helps you apply them.

 

Martin’s Clean Architecture doesn’t merely present options. Drawing on over a half-century of experience in software environments of every imaginable type, Martin tells you what choices to make and why they are critical to your success. As you’ve come to expect from Uncle Bob, this book is packed with direct, no-nonsense solutions for the real challenges you’ll face–the ones that will make or break your projects.

  • Learn what software architects need to achieve–and core disciplines and practices for achieving it
  • Master essential software design principles for addressing function, component separation, and data management
  • See how programming paradigms impose discipline by restricting what developers can do
  • Understand what’s critically important and what’s merely a “detail”
  • Implement optimal, high-level structures for web, database, thick-client, console, and embedded applications
  • Define appropriate boundaries and layers, and organize components and services
  • See why designs and architectures go wrong, and how to prevent (or fix) these failures

Clean Architecture is essential reading for every current or aspiring software architect, systems analyst, system designer, and software manager–and for every programmer who must execute someone else’s designs.

21 reviews for Clean Architecture: A Craftsman’s Guide to Software Structure and Design

  1. Jason Bonafide

    5.0 out of 5 stars

    A must read for anybody looking to become a better Software Engineer and/or Architect

    This book provides a ton of valuable information. The author does an amazing job of describing what clean architecture is, why architecture must be clean and how to achieve it. While I’ve taken a lot away from my first read, I fully expect to give it another read as there is so much good detail to grasp and I want to get the most out of this book. I highly recommend this book!

    One person found this helpful

  2. Gabriel M

    5.0 out of 5 stars

    A transformative read

    I’d never picked up so much transformative material since I studied computer science. This book will change how you create your software and will push up the quality of .your output a couple orders of magnitude.I cannot understate how important a read this is, it’s for sure an instant classic, on the same tier as The Mythical Man-Month, and your algorithms and data structures books.I think, though, that in contrast to those two other books, you get a lot more mileage out of this book if you’ve already shot yourself in the foot by having at least two or three fully done projects under your belt. As I read this books I nodded in agreement in pretty much all of its points because I can instantly remember the pain of not having designed systems this way in the past. As a new programmer I do not think I would have understood most of these points, especially if I were a new grad and had only worked in systems of couple hundred to one thousand lines of code.To me, this is a book to help you make the leap from an experienced software engineer to an expert software engineer and architect. This book has almost no code in it, so you certainly can read it as a newcomer to the field, but the lessons contained will not really sink in until you have a few battle scars in your skin, and you’d much rather not repeat past mistakes.

    6 people found this helpful

  3. Ryan Haber

    5.0 out of 5 stars

    Tour de force to be taken with a grain of salt.

    I’m not a software engineer. I play one on TV, though, so to better inform myself to participate meaningfully in conversations on core architectural principles, I picked up Uncle Bob’s book. I have not been disappointed. As far as I can tell from my other reading on the web and from my own experience, this book hits all the key topics in architecture. I feel 500% better equipped to follow more technical minds in their conversations and to pose questions the answers to which might otherwise go incorrectly assumed.As with “Clean Code”, the book lays out a number of principles. While it’s above my pay grade to deride or disagree with any of the principles he lays out, I suspect that, as with “Clean Code”, theory and reality may collide at points. Benjamin Brewster’s question comes to mind: “What does his lucid explanation amount to but this, that in theory there is no difference between theory and practice, while in practice there is?”I would not presume to use this as a cudgel to hit engineers over the head, especially those with many years’ experience producing solid code, solid architecture, and solid applications. While I will not quote Uncle Bob at them during a conversation, I am very grateful to have him passing me notes.

    3 people found this helpful

  4. Andrei Khmelev

    5.0 out of 5 stars

    The No. 1 book on software architecture in my personal chart

    Certainly worth reading as well as other books from Uncle Bob. Structured guide for agile approach to architecture.

  5. Maros Vranec

    5.0 out of 5 stars

    Another solid book by Robert Martin

    I liked this book less than the Clean Code, but it was a better read for me than the Clean Coder. I’ve found a distillation of this book in article from Robert Martin, which he wrote in 2012 while working at 8th Light (I cannot paste a link in here). The book is partially a very detailed description of the ideas from the article and what is behind them.The book starts with 3 myths we developers live in:1. Myth: We just need to get to market first and we clean it up later.2. Myth: Messy code makes us faster today and slows us later. Myth: We can switch mode from making messes to cleaning messes. (making messes is always slower, even in very short term as shown in example of a simple kata in the book)3. Myth: Starting from scratch is a solution.There is a well written history lesson in the next part. Uncle Bob presents Structured Programming, OOP and Functional Programming and says there is nothing else (programming paradigm-wise) to be invented. Part 3 is about SOLID principles from architecture point of view and part 4 are his Component Principles about component cohesion and coupling from his Agile Software Development book.Part 5 is about Architecture and was the most interesting to read. Most memorable chapters for me were the Screaming Architecture and the Clean Architecture. Both of them are not new, you could have seen them in his videos or the article from 8thlight. The point of Screaming Architecture is that when a new developer joins a health-care project, he should be able to immediately tell “this is a health-care project” just from the project structure. Another topic which was part of multiple chapters, are micro-services. I felt that Robert Martin is not very fond of starting with them. He says services are little more than expensive function calls and as a communication mechanism between the project boundaries (i.e. a detail), they are a decision which should be deffered as far as possible.Part 6, the Details, are a detailed explanations of his article Clean Architecture from 2012. There is a little gem in there, the Missing Chapter 34 written by Simon Brown. I liked his explanation of 4 different kinds of packaging classes together to form components.

    156 people found this helpful

  6. David Holladay

    5.0 out of 5 stars

    Clearly written, well presented

    Instead of simply being a set of prescriptive rules, the author presents sound reasoning and thorough explanations for the how and why of components, effective hierarchy and negotiating dependencies.

  7. Kindle Customer

    5.0 out of 5 stars

    Insights into the role of software architecture with a new architecture pattern with good examples

    Book Review : Clean Architecture by Robert C MartinTLDR : Insights into the role of software architecture with a new architecture pattern with good examplesScore : 5/5Review :This book is an easy read with lots of simple examples and clarity of thought which will improve any architects thinking when designing a system.I will summarize the quick takeaways from the book for software architecturea) Architecture minimizes resources to build and maintain a system and improves productivityb) Software is “soft” due to changeability (ties in with points made in Evolutionary Architecture book)c) Architecture is either “urgent and important” or “not urgent and important”d) Three major paradigms only : Structured, OO, Functionale) Software is more physics and science than formal mathematicsf) OO is about encapsulation, inheritance and polymorphismg) Functional is more about immutablityh) SOLID principles are importanti) Components are the default in architecture (DLL, Jars, Ears)j) Component Cohesion : Reuse/Release, Common Closure, Common Reuse principles. There is a tension among these principles.k) Component Coupling : Avoid cyclic dependencies. Separate stable from volatile components. Depend in direction of stabilityl) Fanout/(Fanin + Fanout) metrics are significant.Abstraction measured by Num_Abstract/Num_Total componentsm) Architecture leaves options openo) Architecture allows single click deploymentp) Architecture communicates operational needsq) Architecture minimizes maintenancer) Software can be decomposed into policy and details. Policy is the value of softwares) Decoupling modes : Source Level, Deployment Level, Services Level (e.g. Microservices). Use the mode based on contextt) IO is irrelevant to architectureu) Level : The distance of policy to I/Ov) Business rules are a reason why software exists and must be unsulliedw) The architecture should “scream” about the purpose of a system rather than the frameworksx) Types of architecture : Hexagonal, DCI, BCE.y) Clean Architecture : Entities <- Use Cases <- Controllers <- Implementation frameworks. Entities are core for example and use cases are next level and know about entities and so onz) Humble objects separate hard to test functionality from other functionality and used at boundaries.Main the dirtiest component as it initializes other components and passes the data to higher level componentsa.1) Just having services does not make an architecture. Components should be related to servicesa.2) Tests should be designed as part of a system become unmaintainablea.3) User hardware abstraction layer and OS abstraction layer in code to make “firmware” more like “software”a.4) Database, Web , Frameworks are details only and not core. Don’t couple to them too much

    One person found this helpful

  8. Amazon Customer

    5.0 out of 5 stars

    Just what I needed

    I was hired as an arhitect to a project, which illustrates perfectly Uncle Bobs view of what will happen to an application without a good design and when developers have an APP-TITUDE.All the struggles Uncle Bob point out in first part of the project are real in this system. I was given a chance to create a new project parallel to old project. Wanting to get things right on second time around, this book was exactly what I needed to clear up some design decisions.

    2 people found this helpful

  9. Claudio Rivera

    5.0 out of 5 stars

    Capital Work on Software Architecture By An Architecture Master

    No doubt that Robert C. Martin is one of the most influential author and software development theorist of our times. The already standard SOLID principles had been with us for decades, serving software discipline with full success. The Clean Series is a set of books full of advises, thoughts, ideas, rationales and principles with the same impact. If you know his videos and lectures, probably this book will see familiar and many of the topics discussed repetitive. But the book has the value to reunite and review his software development discipline philosophy in a concise and complete harmonious set of essays.The main idea is to avoid dependency applying the Dependency Rule at all levels, classes and components. The Dependency Inversion graph, where high-level functions calling middle-level functions through an interface that the middle-interface implements, is a medular software construction that should be applied as an obsessive pattern. It guarantees independence, reusable, clean architecture. This book explains how and why for this.The result is the idea of Plugin architecture where the core of the system, the set of functionality that implements the use cases and business rules (interactors (R. C. Martin)/controls (I. Jacobson)/controllers (C. Larman) should be the center at which all other parts (IO components, details) will point via abstractions (interfaces or abstract classes).I have been practicing clean architecture ideas for many years (and before Martin coined the term) following Martin guidance a principles. Its product is natural, simple, robust, structured, reusable and beautiful to work.Paradoxically, the last chapter about packaging components–written by S. Brown–seems a contradiction to the whole book ideas and Brown somehow point to that (“My definition of a component is slightly different…”). In that chapter, Brown explains several alternatives for software architecture organization with a marked inclination for a monolithic package that represents the services of the system (and repository interaction) and another that represents the controllers. The reasons of that resultant recommendation (a junior undisciplined programmer that don’t follow the cleanliness of the architecture, etc.) are really weak and out of the architect control. His recommendation violates almost all components principles explained by Martin (REP, CCP, CRP, etc.)I love this book and totally recommend the book for all fans of good, clean architecture.

    10 people found this helpful

  10. K. ChaisomboonK. Chaisomboon

    5.0 out of 5 stars

    Masterpiece book to read for software engineer

    Provide important concepts such as SOLID, Component Principle. Most importantly, it demonstrates what is the Clean Architecture looks like.

    One person found this helpful

  11. Victor

    5.0 out of 5 stars

    Timeless

    If you’re looking for those timeless facts about good software architecture, the abstract principles that would protect your investment for many years, this is a great book. If you’re in search for the latest and greatest tech stack, library, framework, patterns like microservices or event streaming, look elsewhere. Though this book does a great job in explaining why all of these are details and where the bigger bet is.

    One person found this helpful

  12. Chris Melton

    5.0 out of 5 stars

    Amazing book with great writing and explanation

    I am only a third of the way through the book and I am amazed at the authors intelligence and the simple way he explains a complex topic. Great presentation, great writing, and already great book. I cannot wait to read the rest and also I am going out right now to buy his next book. What a great author. He clearly knows his stuff.

  13. Jonathan Beyrak Lev

    5.0 out of 5 stars

    Excellent, clear, incisive – but I wanted more

    I have read four books, dozens of articles, and have watched scores of videos by Uncle Bob. As always I found this one fascinating and well written. Bob has a flare for synthesizing very complex technical material from many sources, then boiling it down to easily and enjoyably absorbable explanations. He manages the magic of combining theoretically deep discussion with a very practical, even advice-like perspective. I’m so happy he’s made himself the uncle of young programmers like me and invited us to squat on his lawn.My caveat is that, having gone through so much of Bob’s previous material, there was unfortunately much here that was already familiar to me, including some sections that are taken almost verbatim from his previous writings. In itself this is no problem – had it been the first I ever read of the man I would be totally ecstatic about it, and it’s reasonable of him to assume that most readers would not have followed him around the internets as assiduously as I have. But I was hoping to hear more about topics he only hinted at in his blog posts, e.g. the different kinds of architecture implied by different desired user experiences. I read him mention event-driven, request-based, and batch processing, and I was assuming he would elaborate on these ideas in this book, which he does not. There are many other details I wish he’d gone into or at least offered good follow-up reading on, such as presenters and the creation of use cases.Finally, he does not appear to provide the name of the stellar body on the cover, which is an unfortunate break with custom.

    64 people found this helpful

  14. Game_Devin

    5.0 out of 5 stars

    Interesting, but verbose and high level

    All in all, this was a very interesting read and kept my attention throughout the book. There were a few typos that caused me to have to re-read sentences to try to understand what they were trying to say, but overall the author was able to get his point across and provide justifications. My 2 biggest gripes with this book are 1) a general lack of concrete examples and 2) that verbose, general and really high-level tone that a lot of books take that almost make it hard to follow what’s being said.So the lack of concrete examples gripe can basically be described as the author points out a lot of anti-patterns found in software/system architecture. He points out what you shouldn’t be doing and talks about (at a high level) what you should be doing, but rarely actually shows you what that should look like outside of UML diagrams or general conceptual diagrams.The verbose, general tone gripe basically points to the use of like 20+ words to explain what could’ve been said in 4 or 5 words and in plain English.If you’re looking for a primer for why you should take software/system architecture seriously and what the benefits of doing so would be, then I would highly recommend this book. If you’re looking for a book on the practical application or a reference guide on how to go about software/system architecture, then this likely won’t satisfy that need.

    7 people found this helpful

  15. Esteban Echeverry

    5.0 out of 5 stars

    Fundamental principles for building your applications!

    This book has changed my way to approach software development. You can give a healthier and longer life to your mobile, web or server side apllications if you separate their essential logic from their means of delivery. In only five years I’ve been developing professionally, I have re-written several applications because of a framework or database change or because of moving from web to mobile. This book is a refreshing confirmation for something I had been expecting for so long: that there should be a better way to develop software. A more stable and safer; a cleaner one. Thank you very much for this book, I’m already applying its practical lessons!

    One person found this helpful

  16. Ryan

    5.0 out of 5 stars

    Just buy it now

    A must read for any software engineer!

  17. Yevgen Polyak

    5.0 out of 5 stars

    Great book, the title is a bit misleading.

    The book definitely deserves a read. It brings together ideas that many modern developers are missing and projects them to the systems architectures and components interactivity. The Robert’s style also makes it a more enjoyable read with many educational stories and anecdotal situations.NOTE: If you are looking for a book to guide you through the process of building a great architecture, this book is not for you. I don’t even think such a book exists. If you know of one let me know 😀

    4 people found this helpful

  18. Adam

    5.0 out of 5 stars

    Actually… good information

    The author can be too chatty sometimes. His opinionated “writing” style can cloud the essence that he is trying to get across. Having said that… I was happily surprised that most of the stuff he taught. It seems like an old guy wrote the book and wanted to include the foundational elements of how to produce decent architecture in general. Luckily I must have had good professors because I found it to be a strong overlap with what I had found through my years of research anyway.The nice part of this book is that everything is in one book and is a quick read (2 days here). If you’re rusty or lets face it, were never clear on what dependency inversion is or how to do it — this book should help. I was in that boat, having heard of it for a long time. I was actually already practicing it without knowing that I was. This book helped me discover that for myself.I do like how he talks about what details are in a system.To put it concisely:What is the responsibility of the architect(s) ? to keep the software soft (by managing the dependencies and remaining concerned with the interfaces)

    5 people found this helpful

  19. Houssam HamdanHoussam Hamdan

    5.0 out of 5 stars

    You think your software is done right? Think again!

    Take your time, bird by bird, grasp everything uncle bob is telling you. Then, something will change in ur mindset. The way you look into your code base becomes different.

  20. Pavel Gatilov

    5.0 out of 5 stars

    Clean Guide for an Architect

    The book covers different sides of the Software Architect role. The conflicting collaboration of business and technology. The crucial architect’s focus topics. The architecture principles derived from the famous SOLID principles and proven by decades. Some of the common architecture mistakes.All topics of the book have bright and laconic descriptions. The are also many colorful and didactic examples to the ideas, often taken from the author’s experience. And besides, there is a whole appendix chapter full of autobiographical stories.I find this book great at presenting the essence of the Architect role and the core principles one should follow.

  21. Daniel L.

    5.0 out of 5 stars

    Very helpful

    This book will be a very good starting point to those who are trying to learn how to properly make software. Most tutorials and resources you can currently find focus on how to use new technologies. This book tells you how to build good software regardless of the tech involved.Would have liked examples that were a little more complex, but it does not take away from the book.

Add a review

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Shopping Cart