Preface

When I visit a city, if I have time, I like to wander around by myself, exploring, without looking at a map. It’s a privilege to work in an industry where I get to experience this feeling—the impulse to discover, to chart new territory, is irresistible.

Exploration isn’t limited to physical spaces. It’s also a privilege to work as a software developer and explore mental spaces. Isn’t it fascinating that we can define simple rules that create immense spaces for us to explore? Often, we end up in trouble—we’re lost. But at other times, we discover a trail of conceptual breadcrumbs and use them to construct a map. It’s ridiculous how much fun this is!

When we find and explore something interesting, like microservices, we should draw a map so others can follow and explore further. This book is the map of my journey over the last six years—all the mistakes, revisions, theories, and victories of building microservice systems for production. It isn’t a chronological journal. Instead, I’ve organized my discoveries and distilled them into rules of thumb that others can use. Building a map is hard work, and there are probably better ways to do it, but I’ve found the conceptual structures in this book useful in my own work, and I hope you will, too.