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It may not be common, but I don't think it's inherently not doable. I worked at a Ruby/Rails startup that had a monolithic API codebase, but also a number of ne

It may not be common, but I don't think it's inherently not doable. I worked at a Ruby/Rails startup that had a monolithic API codebase, but also a number of new microservices written in Go using various AWS products. The Platform team that maintained all of this was small like 3-pizza-small and we hired both junior devs as well as interns if they showed an appropriate aptitude. So I wouldn't rule it out. Btw the example company is gone for this intent/purpose but did exist as such. In general I think working at (very) small startups is the best way for very capable, self-learner types to be exposed and allowed to do lots of things in a short time as it's basically a free-for-all matching tasks with anyone who can get it done. Edit: after writing this, I realize that the other Ruby/Rails place I'm working at (Shopify) does let non-senior devs do some complicated stuff in the core monolith and jobs that gets reviewed by senior devs. The team I'm on runs Kanban-style 2-week minicycles (didn't like Sprint'ing) and encourage different people to try tackling different things, often with pairing or review of proposed approach.

solardev 4y ago
Just using microservices doesn't automatically mean your app is distributed, though, or resilient/reliable/maintainable/scalable/consistent/atomic, etc. Microservices increase complexity but don't automatically guarantee improved quality. More to the point: The tricky part of doing it all yourself is you have no idea if you're doing it well, and whether it would survive heavy real-world use and other devs/teams/companies/APIs/user agents. It's not easy for a solo dev to catch pitfalls that more experienced devs, or just more # of devs, might notice in a pair programming sesh or code review. By all means experiment on your own, but IMO I found teams to be much more helpful for actually learning best practices rather than barebones spaghetti code. Startups count too! What you may lose in learning architectural best practices (depending on if you have any seniors and how good they are), you gain in problem-solving and research abilities, not to mention learning to do a lot of things at low cost.

solardev 4y ago

Just using microservices doesn't automatically mean your app is distributed, though, or resilient/reliable/maintainable/scalable/consistent/atomic, etc. Microservices increase complexity but don't automatically guarantee improved quality. More to the point: The tricky part of doing it all yourself is you have no idea if you're doing it well, and whether it would survive heavy real-world use and other devs/teams/companies/APIs/user agents. It's not easy for a solo dev to catch pitfalls that more experienced devs, or just more # of devs, might notice in a pair programming sesh or code review. By all means experiment on your own, but IMO I found teams to be much more helpful for actually learning best practices rather than barebones spaghetti code. Startups count too! What you may lose in learning architectural best practices (depending on if you have any seniors and how good they are), you gain in problem-solving and research abilities, not to mention learning to do a lot of things at low cost.