Episode · The Pragmatic Engineer · 2026-10-07
Gergely Orosz & Sam Newman: books mentioned on The Pragmatic Engineer
Building resilient systems with Sam Newman
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Sam Newman recommended Growing Object-Oriented Software: Guided by Tests by Freeman Steve, Fundamentals of Software Architecture by Neal Ford and others, Balancing Coupling in Software Design by Vlad Khononov, and Learning Domain-Driven Design by Vlad Khononov, and discussed sed and awk Pocket Reference by Arnold Robbins and Domain-driven Design by Eric Evans. Gergely Orosz discussed Building Microservices by Sam Newman and Building Resilient Distributed Systems by Sam Newman.
Books mentioned, in the order they came up
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sed and awk Pocket Reference
Discussed“And he said he gave me a copy of the O'Reilly sed and awk book. And so, I spent 2 days learning how to do regular expressions. And I wrote a refactoring using regular expressions accounting for line lengths and everything else.”
Where to get it
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Growing Object-Oriented Software: Guided by Tests
Growing Object-Oriented Software: Guided by Tests by Freeman Steve is an influential software engineering text that details the principles and practices of test-driven development from a London school perspective.
Recommended“It's sort of like if you want to know, you pretty to read growing object-oriented software guided by tests. One of the worst titled books in existence written by a couple of friends of mine. Steve Freeman and Nat Pryce.”
Where to get it
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Building Microservices
Discussed“You have written the book Building Microservices uh in in 2015 you started to write it in 2014 and as reference Uber started to talk about how they have thousands of microservices in 2015.”
Where to get it
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Domain-driven Design
Domain-driven Design by Eric Evans is a core software engineering book that explores how to model complex business domains and establish a shared ubiquitous language among developers.
Discussed“I mean that's what the whole domain driven design book came out 2000 Eric it was domain driven design came out 2004, and it was a reflection of the fact that the vast majority of software development was the process of us trying to model existing non-digital processes, and how you do that.”
Where to get it
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Building Resilient Distributed Systems
Discussed“So I I wanted to talk to you about your latest book that is just coming out. Building resilience distributed systems. Yeah. What is the book about and why did you feel this is a good time to write it?”
Where to get it
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Fundamentals of Software Architecture
Fundamentals of Software Architecture by Neal Ford and Mark Richards is a comprehensive reference book that outlines the foundational patterns, characteristics, and trade-offs inherent in software architecture.
Recommended“I I think there's a few books I can point people at. I think the um Software Architecture Fundamentals by Neil Ford and Mark Richards is a good read. Just to be clear, they're friends of mine, so I'm not unbiased in recommending it.”
Where to get it
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Balancing Coupling in Software Design
Balancing Coupling in Software Design by Vlad Khononov is a specialized software engineering book that explores how to manage system dependencies and modularity effectively.
Recommended“I would say around the modularity, Vlad Khononov's book on balanced coupling is fantastic. And I mean, his book on DDD is also very good. But that that balanced coupling book is really great.”
Where to get it
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Learning Domain-Driven Design
Learning Domain-Driven Design by Vlad Khononov provides a thorough entry point into domain-driven architecture and software modeling.
Recommended“I would say around the modularity, Vlad Khononov's book on balanced coupling is fantastic. And I mean, his book on DDD is also very good. But that that balanced coupling book is really great.”
Where to get it
Other mentions in this episode (10) — ad reads, self-promotion and passing references, never counted
“Sam Newman is the author who wrote probably the most widely read book on microservices. And yet, as you heard, he said that microservices are an architecture of the last resort.”
“And his latest book, Building Resilient Distributed Systems, is out now. Today, we cover specs versus code as the source of truth and why Sam says that production is truth.”
“I'd written the first book of about microservices a little bit in my spare time at ThoughtWorks and then that book came out and I'd been at ThoughtWorks a long time and I realized that there's always a danger of becoming institutionalized.”
“And I saw it and thought, "Hang on a minute. Like, stuff I was talking about over here seems These things seem quite sensible." And I'd always wanted to write a book. I mean, honestly, I wanted to write an animal book. I wanted to write an O'Reilly book because that Zed Shaw book I was given.”
“And then I kind of realized that despite my best efforts, lots of people seem to be building microservice architectures. Even though if you've read my books, most of my book is about telling you not to do it. But you have to read the book which which is called microservices.”
“And that's that's what I wanted to do. I mean, I enjoy the process of writing anyway, but this is a book I wanted to be able to give to people. That's always been why I write a book. Every now and then I've gone to sit down to read a book to write a book and I found someone”
“The resolution of that often ends up being a decision about are we trading off consistency versus availability in PAC Elk or Harvest and Yield if you're going into that version of Brewer's Conjecture, but don't worry about that. That's in the book. That's why it's a later chapter.”
“And then, as closing, we I think a lot of what we talked about is it's important to hold the architecture in your head, to think about the architecture, think how to modularize. Now, for engineers who want to get better at this kind of high-level thinking, strategic thinking, architectural thinking, outside of reading your book”
“I think if you're looking at things architecture, you're thinking in terms of modules, for me, I like I don't agree with everything in Mark and Neil's book, there's lots of great stuff in there. But for me, actually what starts I sort of mentioned earlier that writing the second edition of Building Microservices”
“So, where can people get your book? You can go and order it now. If you can go and buy it from a local bookshop, that's always a great idea. It's also going to be available for people on the right platform in in sort of digital form.”