front matter

 

foreword

As is often the case with new and technical areas, Chaos Engineering is a simple title for a rich and complex topic. Many of its principles and practices are counterintuitive—starting with its name—which makes it doubly challenging to explain. The early days of a new topic, however, are precisely the time when we need to find and distribute the easy-to-understand explanations.

I’m very pleased to say this book does exactly that.

An oft repeated scientific dictum is that “if you can’t explain it simply, then you don’t really understand it.” I can safely say to you that Mikolaj clearly understands chaos engineering because in these pages he explains its principles and practices with a simplicity and practical use that is uncommon for technical books.

This, however, brings us to the main question. Why on earth would any reasonable person want to introduce chaos into their systems? Things are complicated enough already in our lives, so why go looking for trouble?

The short answer is that if you don’t look for trouble, you won’t be prepared when it comes looking for you. And eventually, trouble comes looking for all of us.

Testing—at least as we have all understood the term—will not be of much help. A test is an activity you run to make sure that your system behaves in a way that you expect under a specific set of conditions.

foreword

preface

acknowledgments

about this book

Who should read this book

How this book is organized: a roadmap

About the code

liveBook discussion forum

about the author

about the cover illustration