Modules vs. Microservices

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Much has been said about moving from monoliths to microservices. Besides rolling off the tongue nicely, it also seems like a no-brainer to chop up a monolith into microservices. But is this approach really the best choice for your organization? It’s true that there are many drawbacks to maintaining a messy monolithic application. But there is a compelling alternative which is often overlooked: modular application development. In this article, we’ll explore what this alternative entails and show how it relates to building microservices.

Microservices for modularity

“With microservices we can finally have teams work independently”, or “our monolith is too complex, which slows us down.” These expressions are just a few of the many reasons that lead development teams down the path of microservices. Another one is the need for scalability and resilience. What developers collectively seem to be yearning for is a modular approach to system design and development. Modularity in software development can be boiled down into three guiding principles:

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