It doesn't have to be messy. I've worked in monoliths that are a complete disaster. I've worked in micro-architectures that are a complete disaster. It's the sa

It doesn't have to be messy. I've worked in monoliths that are a complete disaster. I've worked in micro-architectures that are a complete disaster. It's the same kinds of people and management practices making these disasters. I will say the only clean systems I've worked in have been microservice oriented. All monolithic systems I've worked on never scaled properly and always had bugs with 1000 function deep stacktraces. I've talked to people who have worked in excellent monoliths (rails and django). I know they exist. Moral is: do it right and have good development practices.