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Are there actually many real-life examples of large-scale microservices architecture operating successfully with a range of different languages in use? I did (

Are there actually many real-life examples of large-scale microservices architecture operating successfully with a range of different languages in use? I did (briefly) work at such a shop, I can't say the experience was particularly rewarding, but I was expected to be on top of ALL said languages/stacks and their various idiosyncrasies etc., and much of the code was pretty poorly written. Arguably the biggest challenge was maintaining the build system!

anotherhue 3y ago
I haven't heard of any, the classic 'allowed languages' pages of tech companies come to mind. "You build it you run it", until the OCaml guy quits and now you need to support OCaml.
- scott_w 3y ago
  I do recall speaking to people at a betting company many moons ago who tried to recruit me with the claim they were so open with microservices that they had a key system written in Erlang that only one engineer in the company understood. I politely explained my position on why that seemed suboptimal.
  - lozenge 3y ago
    That's good, when I had to consume their API it was closer to zero engineers who understood it.
jamesfinlayson 3y ago
I've worked at a place where it was a case of choose what you want - there's lots of C#, Python and Javascript, some Go but there's still Scala and CoffeeScript lurking around, as well as some other more esoteric stuff that seemed like a good idea at the time.
- wizofaus 3y ago
  Would you describe it as a "large-scale microservices architecture operating successfully" though?
  - jamesfinlayson 3y ago
    Yes and no - it definitely runs and makes a lot of money, but sometimes things mysteriously go wrong and no one quite knows why (service x is running slowly because service y is running slowly because service z is running slowly and no one knows why service z is running slowly), and it's reached a point where most new work is done in yet another microservice, so headcount keeps slowly growing (usually throwing more offshore contractors at it) to deal with the problem.

anotherhue 3y ago

I haven't heard of any, the classic 'allowed languages' pages of tech companies come to mind. "You build it you run it", until the OCaml guy quits and now you need to support OCaml.

scott_w 3y ago
I do recall speaking to people at a betting company many moons ago who tried to recruit me with the claim they were so open with microservices that they had a key system written in Erlang that only one engineer in the company understood. I politely explained my position on why that seemed suboptimal.
- lozenge 3y ago
  That's good, when I had to consume their API it was closer to zero engineers who understood it.

jamesfinlayson 3y ago

I've worked at a place where it was a case of choose what you want - there's lots of C#, Python and Javascript, some Go but there's still Scala and CoffeeScript lurking around, as well as some other more esoteric stuff that seemed like a good idea at the time.

wizofaus 3y ago
Would you describe it as a "large-scale microservices architecture operating successfully" though?
- jamesfinlayson 3y ago
  Yes and no - it definitely runs and makes a lot of money, but sometimes things mysteriously go wrong and no one quite knows why (service x is running slowly because service y is running slowly because service z is running slowly and no one knows why service z is running slowly), and it's reached a point where most new work is done in yet another microservice, so headcount keeps slowly growing (usually throwing more offshore contractors at it) to deal with the problem.