---
product_id: 66026652
title: "A Philosophy of Software Design Paperback – April 6, 2018"
brand: "john ousterhout"
price: "$84.84"
currency: USD
in_stock: true
reviews_count: 3
url: https://www.desertcart.us/products/66026652-a-philosophy-of-software-design-paperback-april-6-2018
store_origin: US
region: United States of America
---

# A Philosophy of Software Design Paperback – April 6, 2018

**Brand:** john ousterhout
**Price:** $84.84
**Availability:** ✅ In Stock

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- **What is this?** A Philosophy of Software Design Paperback – April 6, 2018 by john ousterhout
- **How much does it cost?** $84.84 with free shipping
- **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship
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## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Worth reading, and discussing with your team.
*by K***H on February 14, 2023*

This book is clear, concise, and avoids padding for the sake of page count. This mirrors how the author advocates that software should be designed: minimize complexity, and pursue simplicity. The book lays out many strategies to achieve this goal, while also explaining how one approach reinforces and strengthens another.I found some of the examples to feel a bit academic, yet most do a good job of clarifying the concept being supported. The author has also offered rebuttals for many of the common reasons developers underinvest in software design, which hopefully helps readers confront their internalized self-bargaining techniques (some of which can be seen by reading other reviews here).My primary criticism is that I had hoped for a chapter or two about how to approach a poorly designed system and move it toward a clean design. There's really only a few spots where even needing to make a trade-off like this is recognized, and the most prominent ends with the proposed solution being to ship the feature on the deadline and ask for refactor time in the future. This almost never happens, since there's always another deadline on the horizon. Another place where the problem is briefly acknowledged makes the argument to always leave code with a better design than it was found in. This isn't always possible, however, as sometimes it's necessary to build iteratively around poor design (violating the consistency and complexity principles) before being able to eliminate it. In other words, on a large system, it's sometimes necessary to make a mess even messier before you can clean it up. I'd love to read the author's perspective on this facet of software design, and how to reason through such trade-offs.That said, given that my main critique is that I'd like to hear even more from the author on the topic of software design, I can easily recommend this book to every professional, or aspiring, software engineer. For more senior folks, it'll likely be a crystallization of wisdom you've already learned, in a form that'll be easier for you to socialize with the rest of your team.I, for one, would love to work on any team where the contents of this book are really internalized and applied.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Good book for any software developer
*by G***S on March 8, 2025*

This book complements in many ways another essential book for anyone who wants to be an excellent software developer. I really like the focus on abstraction, the separation of interface and implementation, and the importance of simplicity to minimize complexity and improve performance.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Just read it. It's short. It's great.
*by M***S on November 10, 2019*

I think every person who has written a fair amount of code should read this book. Managers should buy it for their teams. It should be required reading for new team members (it doesn't long to get through - a few hours).It is NOT for beginner programmers in my mind - you will not have written enough code to understand the points being made. I'd say it's perfect for mid-level to advanced programmers. Why for advanced? Because they can quickly get throught it, and challenge some of their own design assumptions and practices. Mid-level programmers will find it a treasure.The title of the book is perfect, because it really is more philosophical and high-level. But that doesn't mean it's abstract nor boring. I find the ideas very applicable and easy to understand. The opening statements are very powerful - what is complexity, the difference kinds of complexity ("cognitive load" is an excellent concept), etc. It ends with a gem - you know your code is complex if you end up spending a lot of time fixing bugs in it. Complexity begets complexity.Don't let the critical reviews stop you from reading this book - so what, it ignores functional programming. Readers can buy books on that and contrast the desgin philosphy. Yes, it's OOP-based, but so what? It's easy to apply these ideas to non-OOP languages or concepts.Some complained about "3 chapters on comments alone". Not true - the three chapters cover different subjects, and provide excellent guidelines for commenting first (designing with your comments - kind of like writing a mini-spec, if you will), what constitutes a useful comment, and how to name variables. I found it very useful.The concept of "deep" versus "shallow" classes is very interesting, even if some of the reviews have criticized it. The author provdes a very nice clue to whether or not code should be broken out - do you have to keep flipping back and forth between the sub-task and the original function? Maybe it shouldn't have been broken out. Deep classes have simple interfaces and accomplish a lot for the caller. Shallow classes, on the other hand, require the caller to know about them, how to call them in order, etc. Good stuff.It's a short read. You'll scarcely find a book that's so short be so valuable.You can get through it in about 3-4 intense, focused sessions.

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*Last updated: 2026-02-22*