The Franconian
Coder Studio

You can’t see software architecture. Just like you can’t see infrastructure or programming languages. Countless combinations can produce identical-looking results to end users. Yet beyond hype and personal preferences, better approaches exist—ones that value not just the visible outcome but also maintainability, extensibility, operations, and long-term costs.

The ideal solution rarely comes from textbooks. It emerges through hard-won experience, by synthesizing multiple factors into a cohesive whole. One truth stands undeniable: There’s no “one size fits all.” Every problem demands individual consideration. This requires deep experience—without it, you’re just blindly rummaging through your bag of tricks, risking serious harm to your project.

Microservices have dominated recent architectural discussions. Marketed as the antidote to monstrous monoliths—those tangled webs of dependencies with blurred responsibilities—they promised to bring order to chaos. But where monoliths proved cumbersome to develop and maintain, microservices often represent an overcorrection. Have we simply traded one set of problems for another?

The Allure: Promises That Resonate

Microservices seduce with compelling arguments:

1. Surgical Scaling: Components have varying resource needs. Why scale everything when only parts need more power?
2. Development Agility: Encapsulation should reduce complexity. Teams allegedly focus better when owning discrete services.
3. Technology Pluralism: Freedom to choose the “best” tech stack per service.
4. Team Alignment: Small services map neatly to small teams—at least in theory.
5. Failure Containment: A crashing service shouldn’t cascade to the entire system.
6. Effortless Expansion: New feature? Just deploy another microservice.

The Awakening: Hidden Tradeoffs

Reality delivers sobering lessons:

• The Networking Tax: Simple method calls become network operations with latency, timeouts, and retry logic. Suddenly you’re implementing service discovery, circuit breakers, and distributed tracing—the complexity hasn’t disappeared, just relocated.
• The Myth of Independence: Microservices often develop tight coupling despite intentions. Interface changes trigger cross-team negotiations.
• Observability Overload: Monitoring 20 services proves exponentially harder than monitoring one monolith—not linearly harder as you might assume.
• Technology Fragmentation: The promised freedom becomes technical debt. Instead of one coherent codebase, you’re juggling multiple languages, databases, and frameworks.
• Deployment Illusion: Frequent deployments per service lose meaning when features span multiple services.
• Hidden Expenses: Infrastructure overhead, CI/CD complexity, and operational costs multiply silently.

The Balanced Path: Principles Over Dogma

The solution lies in neither blind microservice adoption nor monolith nostalgia. Lasting value comes from timeless principles:

1. Modular By Design

   • Enforce clear component boundaries
   • Eliminate circular dependencies
   • Isolate business logic from frameworks

2. Evolutionary Thinking

   • Begin with modular monoliths
   • Distribute only when justified (scaling needs, team structure)
   • Remember: “Monolith first” is often the wiser choice

3. Technology Stewardship

   • Prefer unified tech stacks
   • Adopt new technologies deliberately, not reflexively
   • Standardize tooling across teams

4. System-Wide Ownership

   • Reject “not my service” thinking
   • Cultivate whole-system understanding
   • Organize by features, not technology silos

Architecture Needs Pragmatism, Not Ideology

Truly successful systems—the ones I’ve seen stand the test of time—share common traits:

1. They began simply (often as well-structured monoliths)
2. They evolved deliberately, not reactively
3. They broke rules consciously—with purpose, not ignorance
4. They invested in clean architectural boundaries
5. They distributed only when absolutely necessary

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: Complexity can’t be eliminated, only redistributed. Microservices exchange code complexity for operational complexity. Before making this bargain, be certain you’re getting fair value.

In the end, what separates successful projects isn’t their choice of microservices or monoliths—it’s their mastery of fundamentals: thoughtful module design, disciplined dependency management, and principled problem-solving. Architects who master these thrive with any approach. Those who chase trends will struggle—no matter how modern their tools appear.

Have thoughts on this article? Join the discussion on or —I’d love to hear your perspective!