Welcome

Thank you so much for purchasing The Tao of Microservices 2nd Edition! This book will help you to understand microservices, and more importantly, give you the ability to use them in production systems. I am an optimist, and I believe that things are getting better all the time. With each generation of software developers, our craft gets a little better, one step at a time. Microservices are just another stepping stone on this path. In this 2nd edition you’ll benefit from my experiences taking the ideas in this book to the next level, and learn about a new technique I like to call “model-as-code”.

This book is not about code (there isn’t much). Nor is it about how to set up and configure any given cloud platform. It does not discuss frameworks or tools (much). For the code examples I use JavaScript, because that is what most people will be able to read. The ideas in this book work in any language. For the examples, I also use an Open Source microservices framework, of which I am the maintainer. You can use any framework, to none at all, and still apply the ideas in this book usefully. This is not a “how to” book, it is a “what to” book. This book will teach you what to do to make microservices work, and teach you how to think about them. The implementation details are always specific to your context.

Software development is both empowering and infuriating. In the words of the great Brian Kernighan, co-author of The C Programming Language;