There's a lot more to building a house than nailing boards together, and there's a lot more to building big applications than writing code. But while architects look at thousands of buildings during their careers, most programmers never get to see the architecture of more than a handful of large programs.

This book changes that. It describes the architectures of over two dozen open source applications: what their major components are, how they interact, and most importantly, why they were built that way. These descriptions come straight from leading developers on each project, who also talk about the lessons they have learned along the way.

If you are an intermediate or senior developer and want to see how your peers have solved hard design problems, this book can help. And if you are just starting out, and want to accelerate your career, this book will get you up to speed more quickly with some of the most exciting software around.