The Software Architects' Newsletter January 2024

[InfoQ Live Logo] The Software Architects' Newsletter January 2024 [View in browser]( Welcome to the InfoQ Software Architects' Newsletter! Each month, we bring you essential news and experience on emerging patterns and technologies from industry peers. This month, we focus on "Evolution of architectures: Monolith, microservices, and moduliths". Technologies, patterns, and practices from this topic span the entire "diffusion of innovation" graphs in our [InfoQ Trends Reports 2023 eMag]( and [InfoQ Software Architecture and Design Trends Report](. We also discussed the impact of these topics in our "[2023 Year in Review Podcast](", which range from early adopter themes, like designing for resilience and micro frontends, to early majority topics, such as designing modular monoliths and correctly building distributed systems. Key challenges remain, including when and how to modularize applications, choice of associated language and platform stack, and designing and building for understandability. News Why LinkedIn Chose gRPC+Protobuf over REST+JSON: Q&A with Karthik Ramgopal and Min Chen In mid-2023, InfoQ editor [Rafal Gancarz]( covered how [LinkedIn would move to gRPC with Protocol Buffers]( for the inter-service communication in its microservices platform. Previously, an open-source [Rest.li]( framework was used with JSON as a primary serialization format. In December, Gancarz followed up with [Karthik Ramgopal](, a distinguished engineer at LinkedIn, and [Min Chen](, a principal staff engineer at LinkedIn, to [learn more about the decision and company motivations behind it](. Both Ramgopal and Chen will be exploring this topic in more depth at the upcoming [QCon London event in April](. How DoorDash Rearchitected Its Cache to Improve Scalability and Performance DoorDash rearchitected the heterogeneous caching system they were using across all of their microservices and created a [common, multi-layered cache](, providing a generic mechanism and solving several issues from adopting a fragmented cache. Caching is a common mechanism used to optimize performance in a system without requiring expensive optimizations. This was especially relevant in DoorDash’s case since implementing business logic has a higher priority than performance optimization, explained DoorDash engineers [Lev Neiman]( and [Jason Fan](. Banking on Thousands of Microservices In this 2023 QCon London talk, [Suhail Patel]( covers lessons learned from [building a bank](, starting from technological choices like using Cassandra and Kubernetes in the early days to how Monzo has maintained its speed of execution through platform engineering and developer experience. Complementary to this topic, [Sid Anand]( recently sat down with [Michael Stiefel]( for the InfoQ podcast episode, "[The Software Architect's Path: Insights from Sid Anand](", and mapped out how software developers can follow a path like Suhail's into the senior engineering and architecture disciplines. Uber Migrates 4000+ Microservices to a New Multi-Cloud Platform Running Kubernetes and Mesos Uber [moved most of its containerized microservices]( from µDeploy to a new multi-cloud platform named Up in preparation for migrating a considerable portion of its compute footprint to the cloud. The company spent two years working on making its many microservices portable to migrate between different computing infrastructures and container management platforms. [NPS-score-InfoQ]( [How could we improve? Take the InfoQ reader survey]( Each year, we seek feedback from our readers to help us improve InfoQ. Would you mind spending 2 minutes to share your feedback in our [short survey](? Your feedback will directly help us continually evolve how we support you. The InfoQ Team Case Study The False Dichotomy of Monolith vs. Microservices With the recent [blog post from AWS saying they have ditched microservices]( and returned to the monolith, the old war of monolith vs. microservices has reignited. In a recent InfoQ article, Ashley Davis asked [about your position on this](. Are you team microservices or team monolith? What if the distinction was a fantasy and people were fighting over fiction: microservices vs. monolith is just one part of the bigger story. The article from AWS has been taken as evidence that the company (as a longtime proponent of microservices) has backflipped on microservices and returned to the monolith. Despite the title of their blog post being calculated to get attention, the article seems to be about their conversion from functions as a service to what is now arguably a microservices architecture, if not a distributed application with services that are larger than micro (however you define micro). This is just one team at AWS acknowledging that their first attempt at an architecture didn't work out (over time), so they tried a different architecture, and it worked better. But so what? This is just the usual way that good software development should work. We all want to focus on what’s most important: doing the right thing for our customers. Taking sides in the debate of microservices vs. monolith gets in the way of that. Sometimes, we need microservices. Sometimes, we need a monolith. Most of the time, we are better off somewhere between these extremes. We can stop our journey to microservices somewhere in the middle of the spectrum, referred to as "the hybrid model". At this point, we might have some big services mixed up with some smaller services. We can have the best of both worlds: the simplicity and convenience of the monolith combined with the flexibility and scalability of microservices. This content is an excerpt from a recent InfoQ article by Ashley David, "[The False Dichotomy of Monolith vs. Microservices](". To get notifications when InfoQ publishes content on these topics, follow "[Architecture and Design](", "[Microservices](", and "[Modularity](" on InfoQ. Missed a newsletter? You can find all of the [previous issues]( on InfoQ. Sponsored [Introducing the Reliable Web App Pattern for .NET - Sponsored by Microsoft]( [Introducing the Reliable Web App Pattern for .NET]( The reliable web app pattern is a set of best practices that helps developers migrate web applications to the cloud and set a foundation for future modernization in Azure. Learn how this pattern helps improve your web application's cost, performance, security, operations, and reliability. Learn more about this topic in the article “[Announcing the reliable web app pattern for .NET](”, sponsored by Microsoft Upcoming Events InfoQ and QCon: For practitioners, by practitioners [Get actionable advice for today's dev priorities at InfoQ Dev Summit Boston (24-25 June).]( The two-day conference hosted by InfoQ will deep-dive into 20+ technical talks focusing exclusively on the technical aspects that matter right now. Provisional topics include: Generative AI, Securing the Software Supply Chain, Scaling Java Applications, Multicloud Practices and more. [Explore more](. [QCon London 2024, April 8-10.]( We're excited to announce our international senior software practitioner speakers for QCon London 2024! Learn valuable insights on the latest practices in FinTech, emerging AI and ML trends, platform engineering, and more. [Register until February 13 to save with our limited early bird offer](. [QCon San Francisco 2024, Nov 18-22.]( QCon San Francisco will be back, November 18-22, 2024. Early access to group discounts is available now. [Save your place]( with our early bird launch pricing until March 12. About InfoQ Senior software developers rely on the InfoQ community to keep ahead of the adoption curve. One of the main reasons software architects and engineers tell us they keep coming back to InfoQ is because they trust the information provided and selected by their peers. We’ve been helping software development teams adopt new technologies and practices for over 15 years through InfoQ articles, news items, podcasts, tech talks, trends reports, and QCon software development conferences. We hope you find this newsletter useful. If not, you can unsubscribe using the link below. [Unsubscribe]( Forwarded email? Subscribe and get your own copy. [Subscribe](   Follow InfoQ on: [Twitter]( [Facebook]( [Youtube]( [LinkedIn]( You have received this email because you subscribed to "The Architects' Newsletter". To stop receiving the Architects' Newsletter, please click the following link: [Unsubscribe]( - - - C4Media Inc. (InfoQ.com), 705-2267 Lake Shore Blvd. West, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M8V 3X2