book review building scalable web site

Book Review: Building Scalable Web Site (the Flickr way)

Readers of this blog know I'm a big fan of flickr and use it for all

my photos. Some readers also know that a big part of my job(s) for the

past few years has involved system architecture and design for

scalability. It's only natural that this book, Building Scalable Web

Sites (the Flickr way), by Cal Henderson, landed in my reading queue.

I've been wanting to read this book since it came out, but never quite

made the time for it. Fortunately the other day my colleague Todd just

put the book in my hands. That's exactly the kind of impetus needed to

vault a book into #1 on my reading list ;)

And earlier today I finished reading the book. It's an excellent book,

as I expected. It's clear and easy to read, has a nice flow, contains

the right balance of examples and theory, and smacks of the

concreteness that only someone who's done it before can convey. It's a

very, very refreshing contrast from many of the highly-academic

research efforts in this area that I also read. Kudos to Cal

Henderson, the author and chief flickr architect, on that.

The first seven chapters of the book are fairly general, I skimmed

them in one evening. But chapters eight, nine, and ten are gold even

to those of us who have been working in the field for a while. Ganglia

is definitely on my list of things to play with now.

Highly recommended.