Fundamentals of Software Architecture
A Modern Engineering Approach
Mark Richards, Neal Ford · 2025 · 2nd ed.
Why it earns its place
Architecture writing tends to be either pattern catalogues or war stories. This is the rare book about the discipline itself: how to identify the trade-off in a decision, how to measure an architecture characteristic, and how to write down why a choice was made. The second edition adds the engineering practices — fitness functions and architecture testing — that turn opinions into something a build can check.
Free alternative
AWS Prescriptive Guidance — Architecture Decision RecordsCovers the decision-recording practice specifically, free, without the wider treatment of trade-off analysis.
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Topics
- architecture
- trade-offs
- decision-records
Affiliate link: if you buy through it we earn a commission at no extra cost to you. It does not change what we recommend, and the free alternative above is named first.