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even experienced architects working in familiar domains have great difficulty getting boundaries right at the beginning. By building a monolith first, you can f

even experienced architects working in familiar domains have great difficulty getting boundaries right at the beginning. By building a monolith first, you can figure out what the right boundaries are This line of thought reaches two decades ago and was expressed in a wonderful essay "Big Ball of Mud" http://www.laputan.org/mud/ http://www.laputan.org/mud/ EDIT: updated with the quote

qwer 9y ago
I think it's more nuanced than that and one can consistently hold both viewpoints at the same time. You just need to have the experience that a soa-first approach is even worse than the ball of mud.
maxxxxx 9y ago
A lot of people don't have the discipline to write decent libraries so they need the overhead of microservices to force them to structure their code reasonably. It seems to me you can have exactly the same boundaries between components that you get through microservices by just having a good compenent separation.
- eropple 9y ago
  This is exactly true. And so is the reverse: competently written code can be segmented out into a SOA by replacing your internal procedure calls with a network call.
  - Terr_ 9y ago
    Caveat: If it's acceptable to have significant latency or the interaction is asynchronous.
    - eropple 9y ago
      Sure, but if it's not acceptable to have significant latency then they're probably the same logical service, yeah?
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- tiziano88 9y ago
  I feel 100% like you. Most developers won't think about clear interfaces between components unless they are forced to do so by an RPC layer. I think at some point we are going to realise this and step back on our footprints , ending up with a monolithic architecture with clearly defined boundaries between components enforced by expressive type systems.
  - mgkimsal 9y ago
    > Most developers won't think about clear interfaces between components unless they are forced to do so by an RPC layer. The developers I know who can't think about clear interfaces are also the ones that won't know how to write clear RPC, and won't be able to create clean microservices.
    - maxxxxx 9y ago
      But they will have "microservices architecture" which looks better on your resume than monolith.
- srtjstjsj 9y ago
  if you have component separation, you have microservices

qwer 9y ago

I think it's more nuanced than that and one can consistently hold both viewpoints at the same time. You just need to have the experience that a soa-first approach is even worse than the ball of mud.

maxxxxx 9y ago

A lot of people don't have the discipline to write decent libraries so they need the overhead of microservices to force them to structure their code reasonably. It seems to me you can have exactly the same boundaries between components that you get through microservices by just having a good compenent separation.

eropple 9y ago
This is exactly true. And so is the reverse: competently written code can be segmented out into a SOA by replacing your internal procedure calls with a network call.
- Terr_ 9y ago
  Caveat: If it's acceptable to have significant latency or the interaction is asynchronous.
  - eropple 9y ago
    Sure, but if it's not acceptable to have significant latency then they're probably the same logical service, yeah?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
tiziano88 9y ago
I feel 100% like you. Most developers won't think about clear interfaces between components unless they are forced to do so by an RPC layer. I think at some point we are going to realise this and step back on our footprints , ending up with a monolithic architecture with clearly defined boundaries between components enforced by expressive type systems.
- mgkimsal 9y ago
  > Most developers won't think about clear interfaces between components unless they are forced to do so by an RPC layer. The developers I know who can't think about clear interfaces are also the ones that won't know how to write clear RPC, and won't be able to create clean microservices.
  - maxxxxx 9y ago
    But they will have "microservices architecture" which looks better on your resume than monolith.
srtjstjsj 9y ago
if you have component separation, you have microservices