On a topic which most authors would probably tend to evangelize, Eric Evans is conversational. His viewpoint is straightforward: these are the principles he feels he's extracted from putting in many, many hours on many, many projects. But he sort of slip-slides around the principles, approaching them from the back with lots of digressions on things his teams have tried; sometimes they work and sometimes they don't work, and maybe this general principle is sort of, kind of, why the ones that worked, did. Which is a bit of a breather if you're used to the typical snake-oil agile style where JOE USED ALL THE AGILE PRINCIPLES AND BROUGHT IN HIS PROJECT 30% UNDER BUDGET!

But Domain-Driven Design is tricky, much more so than the simple agile recipes like test-driven development and pair programming. DDD is much more about finding common ground with the people who use your software, or at least the people who represent those people, and so it's almost more a book on communication than it is on coding. But it isn't. Evans sticks strictly to the coder side of it, and focuses on how one extracts business logic and rules from business people, even when those people aren't completely clear on the rules themselves, which is most of the time.

So if you're the type of developer who just wants a spec to work from, and to be able to tell the boss, "can't change that - it's just like the spec says", feel free to skip this book. If you think domain levels are a waste of time, and you're happy with a UI layer that talks directly to the database layer, go ahead and skip this book.

But if you think that communicating with the people that actually use your software is important, or if you see software as a way to model business functionality, it's a must read. Because without some inkling of these principles, no piece of complicated, useful software could ever come into being. ( )

Following on from the original Design Patterns book by the Gang of Four this is a must read for anyone serious about taking the development to the next level. ( )

Clever and clear, even if somewhat slow-moving. Eric Evans knows where to lead the reader, and the book is full with plenty of useful insights. ( )