A visual software-architecture reference
The Architecture Reference
Learn to design systems that last — from architecture foundations and styles to domain-driven design, microservices, event-driven and distributed systems, APIs, cloud & SaaS, process automation and the architect’s craft. Clear diagrams, explicit trade-offs, quizzes, and progress that sticks — distilled from 20+ landmark architecture books. Pick a track and start.
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Tracked across every track — mark any page “learned” and this fills up. Saved in your browser.
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Foundations
What architecture really is — thinking like an architect, the architecture characteristics that drive every decision, components and modularity, and evolutionary architecture.
15 topics · architect mindset → fitness functions Enter →Architecture Styles
The named shapes a system can take — layered, pipeline, microkernel, service-based, event-driven, space-based and microservices — scored against the characteristics they optimize.
12 topics · monolithic → distributed styles Enter →Domain-Driven Design
Modeling software around the business — ubiquitous language, bounded contexts and context maps, then aggregates, value objects, domain events, event sourcing and CQRS.
12 topics · strategic → tactical design Enter →Microservices
Independently deployable services — the trade-offs, decomposing a monolith safely, communication and sagas, building and operating at scale, and the team topologies behind them.
17 topics · decomposition → operations Enter →Event-Driven
Systems that react to events — event-first design, notification vs state transfer, event sourcing, streams and logs, and events as the integration fabric of a data mesh.
12 topics · events → data mesh Enter →Distributed Systems
Building across many machines — the fallacies of distributed computing, consistency and CAP, scaling with caching, replication and partitioning, and reusable system patterns.
12 topics · fallacies → scaling patterns Enter →APIs & Communication
The contracts between systems — REST, gRPC and GraphQL, hypermedia and idempotency, gateways and security, evolution without breaking clients, and async messaging.
14 topics · design → management → messaging Enter →Cloud & SaaS
Architecting on the cloud and selling software as a service — serverless-first design with functions and events, and multi-tenant SaaS: isolation, control planes, tiering and metering.
11 topics · serverless → multi-tenant SaaS Enter →Process Automation
Coordinating long-running business processes across services — why they’re hard, modeling them with BPMN and executable workflows, orchestration vs choreography, and operating them.
9 topics · modeling → orchestration Enter →The Architect's Path
The architect as a person and strategist — the architect elevator between business and tech, patterns for technology strategy, and systems thinking for complex organizations.
12 topics · the elevator → strategy → systems thinking Enter →Most liked pages
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How it works
See it, then read it
Mermaid diagrams make the structure and the flows obvious before you read a line of prose.
Trade-offs, not dogma
Every page is explicit about when to reach for an idea and when to avoid it — there are no best practices, only trade-offs.
One thing to remember
Every lesson ends with a single, flashcard-worthy takeaway — the one sentence to keep if you forget the rest.
Made to remember
A quiz on every page plus spaced-repetition review turn passive reading into a journey you finish.