DPC2022: Love Your Monolith

Explore the benefits and misconceptions of monolith architecture, including its stability, scalability, and maintenance. Discover why monoliths can be a viable choice for software development and how to design and maintain them effectively.

Key takeaways
  • Monoliths are hard to maintain and scale, but they are inherently stable and have fewer dependencies.
  • Monoliths can be designed with logical systems in mind, using established languages and tooling.
  • The idea of services orbiting a monolith is not a microservice architecture, but rather a sensible design approach.
  • Microservices are not a cure-all for monoliths, and relying on them solely for scalability is shortsighted.
  • Monoliths can be grown organically, with developers working on different parts of the system without needing to fully understand the entire system.
  • Coupling can be a bad thing, even in monoliths, and should be minimized.
  • Software development processes can be mapped out like a graph, with phases like design, development, and testing.
  • Prototyping is important for monoliths, allowing developers to test and validate different approaches before committing to a design.
  • Code quality is important, and monoliths can benefit from solid principles of object-oriented programming.
  • Monoliths can be designed with scalability in mind, using techniques like caching and load balancing.
  • Microservices can be used in monoliths as satellite services, providing additional functionality and reducing coupling.
  • The key to successful monolith development is understanding why it’s being built, and designing with that in mind.
  • Monoliths can be maintained and scaled over time, with careful planning and testing.