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There are a lot of lessons to be taken from this book, many of which should have been learned after Vietnam which shares many of the same characteristics as the war in Afghanistan. The fact that so many generals and lawmakers were ignorant (willfully or not) of the many similarities and the inevitable outcomes is both depressing and infuriating. The same hubris, ignorance, and wishful thinking that ran through both conflicts resulted in billions of dollars and thousands of lives wasted.

The strategies and tactics that the book espouses are all well and good, but there's no depth to the suggestions and writing style leaves a lot to be desired. It feels like a series of academic blog posts about survey results instead of a technical manual for how to implement the changes that it wants you to make. As of 2024, it also feels a bit dated; only the most conservative, dysfunctional organizations aren't doing the basic things that the book suggests.

This book provides many of the idioms and short-cuts to learning Go that you otherwise have to learn from experience. It's not trying to be a "complete reference" type of book that spends 1000 pages covering every detail. Some topics are skimmed over a bit, while others that are more unique to Go or appear quirky to programmers that know other languages are given more explanation.

Be sure to check the errata on the publisher's website before diving deep into the book.

A thorough and easy-to-follow explanation of the composition and tradeoffs of CQRS systems. There is one chapter about Event Sourcing which provides the theoretical and practical contrasts between the two approaches.

This is a code-heavy book and the code is written in PHP, but it's pretty clear and should be easy to translate to other languages.

Having at least a minimal understanding of Domain Driven Design would be helpful before reading this book.