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It's really disappointing to see this kind of lazy oversimplification being the top comment on HN, as if monoliths were perfect and microservices didn't have an

It's really disappointing to see this kind of lazy oversimplification being the top comment on HN, as if monoliths were perfect and microservices didn't have any advantages over them. Yes, maybe the company you work at does not have a good reason to use microservices. But this doesn't mean the same goes for the rest of the industry. Being a nay-sayer and rejecting microservices in any circumstances is just as unreasonable as rejecting monoliths.

civilitty 3y ago
> Being a nay-sayer and rejecting microservices in any circumstances is just as unreasonable as rejecting monoliths. No. No no no no! Monoliths (modular or otherwise) are the default and if you have to ask, you don’t need microservices. Period. That’s not a lazy oversimplification, that’s hard earned experience. In over 15 years I’ve seen microservices singlehandedly kill the engineering momentum at nearly half a dozen companies. They’ve got a worse track record than techbro management. Literally the only time I’ve seen the architecture work well was when I was working at Azure on cloud infrastructure with a dozen teams working on a single product. The vast majority of developers never work on a project of that size and yet try to cargo cult microservices into companies with less than a dozen devs, let alone teams. Maybe your company is one of the few companies where microservices make sense (or you haven’t come to grips with the stockholm syndrome yet), but the hype around microservices have been a disaster for many more companies than they have helped in my career
- tail_exchange 3y ago
  > No. No no no no! Monoliths (modular or otherwise) are the default and if you have to ask, you don’t need microservices. Period. That’s not a lazy oversimplification, that’s hard earned experience. But this is not what I am arguing. Yes, monoliths are the default, and unless you reached the point where you have thousands of engineers and teams working completely independently, you don't need microservices. I've also seen momentum being killed by microservices in smaller startups, and I've also seen large organizations operating with microservices wonderfully. My beef with this kind of comment is that it kills any interesting discussion about architecture into a "don't use microservices" circlejerk, which is not helpful to people who actually want to dive into this kind of architecture. As you said yourself, microservices do work well for large companies, so why pretend it doesn't?
  - civilitty 3y ago
    > As you said yourself, microservices do work well for large companies, so why pretend it doesn't? Same reason we don't teach people anything about driving an 18 wheeler when they apply for their regular driver's license. A small minority of drivers will ever even have to think about the topic and when they do, they'll seek out a specialized trucker school or their employer will guide them through the process using institutional knowledge. There is zero value to exposing people with learner's permits to the nuances of driving massive trucks. Unlike the truckers, however, tech bloggers have hyped up the concept of microservices as a panacea to all developers, resulting in a disastrous cargo cult. There is no interesting conversation to be had about microservices in this context. That discussion is going to be had with all the other senior-most engineers in an organization because any org incapable of such an in-depth discussion internally should not be using microservices.

civilitty 3y ago

> Being a nay-sayer and rejecting microservices in any circumstances is just as unreasonable as rejecting monoliths. No. No no no no! Monoliths (modular or otherwise) are the default and if you have to ask, you don’t need microservices. Period. That’s not a lazy oversimplification, that’s hard earned experience. In over 15 years I’ve seen microservices singlehandedly kill the engineering momentum at nearly half a dozen companies. They’ve got a worse track record than techbro management. Literally the only time I’ve seen the architecture work well was when I was working at Azure on cloud infrastructure with a dozen teams working on a single product. The vast majority of developers never work on a project of that size and yet try to cargo cult microservices into companies with less than a dozen devs, let alone teams. Maybe your company is one of the few companies where microservices make sense (or you haven’t come to grips with the stockholm syndrome yet), but the hype around microservices have been a disaster for many more companies than they have helped in my career

tail_exchange 3y ago
> No. No no no no! Monoliths (modular or otherwise) are the default and if you have to ask, you don’t need microservices. Period. That’s not a lazy oversimplification, that’s hard earned experience. But this is not what I am arguing. Yes, monoliths are the default, and unless you reached the point where you have thousands of engineers and teams working completely independently, you don't need microservices. I've also seen momentum being killed by microservices in smaller startups, and I've also seen large organizations operating with microservices wonderfully. My beef with this kind of comment is that it kills any interesting discussion about architecture into a "don't use microservices" circlejerk, which is not helpful to people who actually want to dive into this kind of architecture. As you said yourself, microservices do work well for large companies, so why pretend it doesn't?
- civilitty 3y ago
  > As you said yourself, microservices do work well for large companies, so why pretend it doesn't? Same reason we don't teach people anything about driving an 18 wheeler when they apply for their regular driver's license. A small minority of drivers will ever even have to think about the topic and when they do, they'll seek out a specialized trucker school or their employer will guide them through the process using institutional knowledge. There is zero value to exposing people with learner's permits to the nuances of driving massive trucks. Unlike the truckers, however, tech bloggers have hyped up the concept of microservices as a panacea to all developers, resulting in a disastrous cargo cult. There is no interesting conversation to be had about microservices in this context. That discussion is going to be had with all the other senior-most engineers in an organization because any org incapable of such an in-depth discussion internally should not be using microservices.