31–40 of 272 posts
Microservices [0] > grug wonder why big brain take hardest problem, factoring system correctly, and introduce network call too > seem very confusing to grug 0: https://grugbrain.dev/#grug-on-microservices
I can't prove this scales up forever but I've been very happy with making sure that things are carefully abstracted out with dependency injection for anything that makes sense for it to be dependency-injected, and using module boundaries internally to a system as something very analogous to microservices, except that it doesn't go over a network. This goes especially well with using actors, even in a non-actor-focused language, because actors almost automatically have that clean boundary between them and the rest of the world, traversed by a clean concept of messages. This is sometimes called the Modular Monolith.
Done properly, should you later realize something needs to be a microservice, you get clean borders to cut along and clean places to deal with the consquences of turning it into a network service. It isn't perfect but it's a rather nice cost/benefit tradeoff. I've cut out, oh, 3 or 4 microservices out of monoliths in the past 5 years or so. It's not something I do everyday, and I'm not optimizing my modular monoliths for that purpose... I do modular monoliths because it is also just a good design methodology... but it is a nice bonus to harvest sometimes. It's one of the rare times when someone comes and quite reasonably expects that extracting something into a shared service will be months and you can be like "would you like a functioning prototype of it next week"?
> Microservices only pay off when you have real scaling bottlenecks, large teams, or independently evolving domains. Before that? You’re paying the price without getting the benefit: duplicated infra, fragile local setups, and slow iteration. For example, Segment eventually reversed their microservice split for this exact reason — too much cost, not enough value. Basically this. Microservices are a design pattern for…
Microservices [0] > grug wonder why big brain take hardest problem, factoring system correctly, and introduce network call too > seem very confusing to grug 0: https://grugbrain.dev/#grug-on-microservices
The short answer is it adds monkey patching to languages that don't have it.
But when I see a plan to use it that doesn't include a plan for how to stop using it again ASAP, I get very worried.
I know about a org with ~2-3 devs who decided microservices would be cool. I warned not to go that way because they would surely face delivery and other issues which they wouldn't have when building the solution based on a architecture archetype which could be a better fit for the team and solution, which I evidently decided should be a modular monolith. (the codebase at that point was already a monolith, in fact, bu…
Microservices are GREAT when 1 team owns each service. I haven't seen a good use case when you have 1 team supporting multiple microservices.
Totally agree. Micro services unnecessarily makes thing complicated for small teams. IMHO it solves the problem of velocity ONLY when a large engineering team is slowed down due to too much release & cross cutting dependencies on a monolith. Although I see people solving with modular monoliths, merge queues and CODEOWNERS effectively. Few cases where microservices makes sense probably when we have a small and well bo…
Can you elaborate a bit on codeowners, I've not heard of that kind of solution before.
Here's more at Github's docs: https://docs.github.com/en/repositories/managing-your-reposi...
They have their place. In my experience, a good rule of thumb[0] is if there are actual benefits from being a standalone service. For example, we have a authentication microservice at work. It makes sense that it lives outside of the main application, because its used in a multiple different contexts and the service boundary allows for it to be more responsive to changes, upgrades and security fixes than having it be…
Most “benefits” assumed from separation can be achieved with clear interfaces and modular monoliths, without the cognitive and operational tax microservices impose. > It also adds enough intentional friction that we don't accidentally put logic where it doesn't belong as part of the user authentication process. Preventing misplaced logic is a matter of good code structure, well defined software development processes…
Perhaps yes. Every situation should be evaluated on merits. This came across that there is also an assumption that we didn't try other solutions first - we absolutely did. Microservice is the best solution to solving the problems we needed solved in this case. Even better than modular monolith with clear interfaces.
>without the cognitive and operational tax microservices impose
When done correctly, I don't think there is a tax. Most operational questions should be automated away once discovered. The only 'tax' is that it lives separately from the larger application and is deployed independently, but I haven't seen in practice this add any notable overhead.
>Preventing misplaced logic is a matter of good code structure, well defined software development processes and team discipline
All true, and a microservice can aid all of these things too, but isn't the solution you should reach for when solving for these things and these things alone in my opinion. That said, myself and others have observed there is time saved on enforcing discipline around this issue once we separated the code away from the main application. I can't deny that hasn't been a good thing, because it has. It would be leaving information out about the benefits we'v experienced, and I see no reason to do that.
All told, completely dismissing the value of microservices as a potential solution is no different than completely dismissing other solutions in favor of microservices. Things have their place, there are pros and cons to them, and should be evaluated relative to their merit for the situation.
You may find you never implement microservices, or implement very few, or perhaps the needs of an organization is as such that its a pattern used most of the time, but the technical merits of doing so - with any decision of this nature, not limited to microservices - should have a backing justification that includes why other solutions don't fit
Totally agree. Micro services unnecessarily makes thing complicated for small teams. IMHO it solves the problem of velocity ONLY when a large engineering team is slowed down due to too much release & cross cutting dependencies on a monolith. Although I see people solving with modular monoliths, merge queues and CODEOWNERS effectively. Few cases where microservices makes sense probably when we have a small and well bo…
Can you elaborate a bit on codeowners, I've not heard of that kind of solution before.
I know about a org with ~2-3 devs who decided microservices would be cool. I warned not to go that way because they would surely face delivery and other issues which they wouldn't have when building the solution based on a architecture archetype which could be a better fit for the team and solution, which I evidently decided should be a modular monolith. (the codebase at that point was already a monolith, in fact, bu…
If people on the team continue to think about the "system" as a monolith (what they already know and are comfortable with), you'll hit friction ever step of the way from design all the way out to deployment. Microservices throw out a lot of traditional assumptions and designs, which can be hard for people to subscribe to.
I think there has to be adequate "buy-in" throughout the org for it to be successful. Turning an existing mono into microservices is very likely to meet lots of internal resistance as people have varying levels of being "with it", so-to-speak.