Microservices vs. Monolith
One codebase that deploys as a unit, or many small services that each deploy alone — a trade of coupling for distribution costs. This video compares them on the axes that actually decide: where the transaction boundary sits, how data gets shared, what happens when one part fails, and what a release actually requires.
Topics covered:
- The deployment story: one artifact vs. many, and what changes about releases
- The database boundary: why microservices forbid shared tables and what that costs
- Failure isolation: a crash in one service vs. a crash anywhere
- Network as a new failure mode: latency, retries, and partial failures
- The monolith's escape hatches: modules and feature flags
- When splitting pays: team autonomy and independent scaling
- The migration cost curve and why most teams start too small to benefit
- How to decide: transaction scope, team size, and release cadence
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