Monolithic vs. Microservices Architecture – What's the Right Starting Point?
Goal of this Discussion
As CS students and future developers, we often start our major projects (like capstone projects, full-stack web apps, or final group assignments) with a simple, singular application structure. However, in the professional world, architectures are split between tightly coupled Monoliths and distributed Microservices.
This issue aims to explore the trade-offs, challenges, and optimal use cases for each approach, especially in the context of academic projects and early-stage startups.
The Architectures:
Monolith: A single, unified code base where all components (UI, business logic, data access) are tightly integrated and deployed together.
Microservices: A collection of small, independent services, each running its own process and communicating via lightweight mechanisms (like APIs).
Guiding Questions for the Discussion
Please share your thoughts and experiences by addressing some of the following points:
- Learning and Development
Learning Curve: Which architecture is generally easier for a beginner or a small student team to grasp, build, and deploy quickly? Why?
Technology Stack: How does Microservices architecture enable polyglot persistence (using different databases for different services), and what are the pros and cons of this approach?
- Trade-offs and Challenges
Complexity: At what point does a Monolith become too complex to manage, making a switch to Microservices necessary?
Testing and Debugging: Which architecture presents greater challenges when tracking down an error (e.g., debugging a transaction that spans five different services)?
Cost & Overhead: Microservices introduce operational overhead (network latency, service discovery, distributed logging). When do these costs outweigh the flexibility gains? google baseball
- Real-World Applications
Scenario 1 (Academic): You are building a semester-long project for a cohort of 50 users. Which architecture would you choose, and why?
Scenario 2 (Startup): You are launching a new e-commerce service with uncertain growth potential. How do you decide on your initial architecture?
We encourage everyone to share links to useful articles, case studies (e.g., "Netflix moved to microservices," "GitHub kept a monolith"), and personal experiences to enrich the discussion!