Book · 2010
Continuous Delivery
by Jez Humble
The devops book the internet's most skeptical devops subreddit never actually argues with.
What does Reddit think of Continuous Delivery?
Twenty-one of twenty-eight mentions sit in r/devops, and that's a genuinely skeptical subreddit. This is where Phoenix Project's writing gets called 'terrible' despite good intentions (↑48), where a linked post titled 'GitOps is a placebo' gets shared without pushback (↑44), and where microservices get filed as 'the last resort architecture' (↑43). Continuous Delivery survives that skepticism untouched. The one excerpt that names it directly (↑64) puts it in a four-book stack with Accelerate, The DevOps Handbook, and Google's SRE book — no ranking, no caveat, just a list. r/programming's own canon-ranking thread (↑655), the one that seats Pragmatic Programmer at 67% and Clean Code at 66%, is the kind of company it keeps outside devops circles too. Not one displayed excerpt takes a direct shot at it, which is notable given how much of r/devops's energy goes into arguing against everything else in the genre.
Community feedback & reader fit
Themes
- · canonical four-book devops stack
- · technical practice over culture parable
- · paired with Accelerate and the DevOps Handbook
- · escapes the subreddit's usual skepticism
Common praise
- + The only commenter who directly names it (↑64) lists it alongside Accelerate and the DevOps Handbook with zero hedging.
- + r/devops trashes Phoenix Project's prose and calls GitOps 'a placebo' in the same sample, but lands no equivalent shot at this book.
- + It shows up in the r/programming canon-ranking thread that also seats Pragmatic Programmer and Clean Code at the top.
Common criticism
- − Only one displayed excerpt actually names the book — the rest of the r/devops sample argues around it, not about it.
- − Nobody quotes a specific technique from it; it's cited as a stack member, never unpacked.
Who it's for
You already believe in CI/CD and want the book that predates most of the tooling built to imitate it — the one commenter who names it puts it next to Accelerate and the DevOps Handbook, not a vendor's whitepaper. Found Phoenix Project's fiction insufferable? Same subreddit, and it never turns that skepticism on this book. Want the technical practices instead of the culture parables? This is the one from the stack that isn't a novel.
Mentions over time
Top subreddits
Which Reddit comments matter for Continuous Delivery?
The most relevant excerpts across the subreddits where this book is mentioned — opinionated, argued takes first, then top-upvoted mentions. Click through to read the full thread.
“Here's the list, for anyone interested in just that: 1. The Pragmatic Programmer by David Thomas & Andrew Hunt (67% recommended) 2. Clean Code by Robert C. Martin (66% recommended) 3. Code Complete by Steve McConnell (42% recommended) 4. Refactoring by Martin Fowler (35% recommended) 5. Hea…
“This is the list I made for work: **Culture/Organization** * The Phoenix Project (Kim/Spafford/Behr, 2013): allegorical novel that uses fiction to teach us about the advantages of modern IT culture (agile, CI/CD, etc.) * [The U…
“And here’s the list for those too lazy to follow that link: 1. The Pragmatic Programmer 2. Clean Code 3. Code Complete 4. Refactoring 5. Head First Design Patterns 6. The Mythical Man-Month 7. The Clean Coder 8. Working Effectively with Legacy Code 9. Design Patterns 10. Cracking the Coding Intervie…
“Devops is a methodology. A way to get development and operations working together (usually) in a shop using agile methodologies. Additionally they will have been sold or trying to integrate the latest and greatest “devops” tools I also have a subscription to a book service. If you want to know whic…
“DevOps Handbook by Gene Kim and others is good to read through and/or as a reference. Making Work Visible by Dominica Degrandis is wonderful for dealing with invisible w…
“_Accelerate_ by Nicole Forsgren, Jez Humble, Gene Kim. _The Devops Handbook_ Gene Kim _Site Reliability Engineering: How Google Runs Production Systems_ Online here _Continuous Delivery_: Jez Humble, Dave Farley
“Additonally: - **Db change management**: tracing dependencies between functions is hard. If you need to walk through the logic for one operation you're … requirement for a maintenance cycle (well, and the person that came up with this style of architecture also usually thinks long cycles are safer a…
“1. How "good Linux knowledge" is defined? If it's good with hands-on command line knowledge, that's one thing, but if the company requires real deep understanding of Linux kernel, how does it work with IO, memory, network, filesystems, users, I can definitely recommend "Linux Programming Interfaces"…
“I've read half of The Phoenix Project. The intention of the authors is good. But the writing and contrievances are just terrible. The whole book reads as power-fantasy of operations person, who discovers this magic "kanban" thing and then uses it to turn around disfunctional company around in recor…
“GitOps is a placebo "...GitOps offers nothing new. Version controlling declarative infrastructure definitions, correcting configuration drift, and monitoring infrastructure did not origina…
“It won’t cover everything but continuous delivery by Jez Humble and microservices by Sam Newman will give you context about why the factors are a generally good idea for the kind of apps they were written about
“Continuous Delivery is written by some people from ThoughtWorks. It's great:
“Yes, but devops daddy Dave Farley wrote about devops in "continuous delivery" as a means of bridging the silo gaps, but that essentially states you need someone with 'all the skills' and it's just not feasible for companies of large scale to hire for that. It's much easier for HR to just define a n…
“I highly recommend checking out the first chapter of the book *Continuous Delivery: Reliable Software Releases through Build, Test, and Deployment Automation* by David Farley and Jez Humble. It provides great insights on how to safely manage deployments and could be helpful for your situation.
“Have a look at this: Also i learned a lot from these books: The Devops Handbook - Gene Kim Continuous Delivery - David Farley, Jez Humble Designing Data-Intensive Applications: The Big Ideas Behind Reliable, Scalable, and Maintainable Sys…
Convinced? Pick up Continuous Delivery
Readers also mention
Books that share discussion threads with Continuous Delivery — counted from the comments, not curated.
Continuous Delivery — frequently asked
Does r/devops actually recommend Continuous Delivery, or just list it?+
Mostly list it. The one excerpt that names Continuous Delivery directly (↑64) places it in a four-book stack with Accelerate, The DevOps Handbook, and Google's SRE book, with no elaboration. That's typical of the sample: the book gets cited as a stack member, not unpacked with specific chapters or practices.
Is Continuous Delivery still relevant compared to newer devops books like Accelerate?+
The sample treats them as companions, not rivals. The one direct citation (↑64) lists Continuous Delivery alongside Accelerate and The DevOps Handbook in the same breath, same list, no ranking. Nobody in the displayed quotes argues one has replaced the other.
Why is r/devops so critical of other canon books but not Continuous Delivery?+
Unclear from the sample, but the pattern holds. The same subreddit calls Phoenix Project's writing 'terrible' (↑48) and shares a post titled 'GitOps is a placebo' (↑44), yet no displayed excerpt takes a specific shot at Continuous Delivery. It survives where other genre staples don't.
Is Continuous Delivery a culture book like Phoenix Project or a technical one?+
Technical, per how it's grouped. The direct citation (↑64) seats Continuous Delivery next to Accelerate and the DevOps Handbook — practice-and-metrics books — rather than next to workplace-fiction titles like Phoenix Project that show up elsewhere in the same r/devops sample.