Andy Butland

Cross-posting an article written for the agency I work for, Zone , on moving away from "CMS as a platform" , a concept I first came across in the Thoughtworks tech radar , warning against building too much directly into the CMS/web application, and considering external services, data sources and asynchronous processes.

I took a recommendation from the blog of Gergely Orosz on a recently released book on software architecture, "A Philosophy of Software Design" by John Ousterhout , purchased and have just finished reading it. In short, I'd second the recommendation - it's not a long book, but is packed with good, practical advice presented from the perspective of an academic, mostly based on his views of many implementations of projects by his students. What I particularly enjoyed about it was that it's a book that makes you think as you go... you aren't simply ticking off a list of things you agree with already. Gergely had a few reservations that he outlined in his post , most of which I also agree with, and I also had some of my own - but all in a postitive way as it made me think and question some practices I've used up to now and consider them from a different viewpoint. In the appendix, John lists 15 design principles that he describes fully in the book, whi