The Microservices Mirage: Architecture or Just a Fancy Deployment Model?

Microservices and the Great Debate

Microservices. The term rolls off the tongue at tech meetups like the latest must-have gadget. Architects love it, developers tolerate it, and managers use it as a buzzword to impress clients. But here’s the real question: are microservices truly an architectural style, or are they just a clever deployment model disguised as innovation? Spoiler alert: it might be the latter, and lazy architects might be fueling the confusion.

What Microservices Claim to Be

Microservices are often touted as an architectural style, promising modularity, scalability, and resilience. The idea is simple: break your system into smaller, self-contained services that can be developed, deployed, and scaled independently. Sounds fantastic, right? Until you realize that this “architecture” is more about how you deploy and manage components than how you design them.

Lazy architects jump on the microservices bandwagon because it sounds sophisticated. They’ll wax poetic about bounded contexts and domain-driven design, often without having touched the codebase. It’s the perfect excuse to delegate the hard work to developers while they polish PowerPoint slides.

Why did the architect love microservices? Because “independent deployability” looks great on a slide, even if it doesn’t work in practice.

Deployment vs. Design: The Key Difference

An architectural style defines how a system is designed and structured. It’s about modules, interactions, and principles. Microservices, however, are primarily a deployment strategy:

1. Independent Deployment: Microservices shine in how they allow you to deploy pieces of your system separately. This is a deployment model, not a design principle.

2. Distributed Systems: They inherently create a distributed system, but distributed systems are a result of deployment choices, not a design style.

3. Tool Dependency: Microservices rely heavily on infrastructure tools like Kubernetes, Docker, and CI/CD pipelines. These tools facilitate deployment, but they don’t dictate the system’s core architecture.

What’s an architect’s favorite microservices tool? Whatever the developers set up for them.

The Myth of Modularity

Lazy architects often equate microservices with modularity. “Each service represents a module,” they say, sipping their overpriced lattes. But true modularity is a design principle that doesn’t depend on deployment. You can have a highly modular monolith or a tangled mess of microservices.

Example: If your services share a database schema or rely on implicit API contracts, congratulations! You’ve built a distributed monolith. The “independent” microservices are tightly coupled, and your “modularity” is an illusion.

Lazy architect: Why don’t they code? Because fixing tight coupling isn’t as fun as drawing service diagrams.

Distributed Chaos: The Dark Side of Microservices

Distributed systems are inherently complex. Microservices amplify this complexity by introducing:

• Network Latency: Every local call becomes a network call. Enjoy your debugging sessions.
• Data Consistency Nightmares: “A database per service” sounds great until you’re writing compensating transactions.
• Operational Overhead: Logging, monitoring, and tracing become essential, not optional.

These challenges arise from how services are deployed and interact, not from the system’s design principles. A well-designed monolith avoids many of these pitfalls, proving that architecture and deployment are distinct.

Why did the lazy architect choose microservices? Because “Just scale horizontally” sounds smarter than solving real problems.

Uncle Bob’s Take: Microservices as Deployment

Software legend Uncle Bob Martin has argued that microservices are not an architectural style but a deployment model. His reasoning?

1. Modularity Is Independent of Deployment: You can design a modular system without microservices.
2. Deployment Doesn’t Fix Design Flaws: Splitting a poorly designed monolith into microservices results in distributed chaos, not a better system.
3. Retrofitting Is Possible: A well-designed monolith can be deployed as microservices later, proving that microservices are about deployment, not architecture.

Lazy architects often ignore these points because it’s easier to chase trends than to focus on solid design.

Independent Deployment: The Fragile Dream

Independent deployment is the Holy Grail of microservices, but it’s often more theory than reality. Here’s why:

• Coupling Through APIs: When services depend heavily on each other’s APIs, changes in one can break others.
• Implicit Dependencies: Shared databases, schemas, or even assumptions about data formats can undermine independence.
• Coordination Hell: In reality, teams often need to coordinate deployments to avoid breaking things.

Humor break: What’s the lazy architect’s deployment strategy? “Ship it and blame the other team.”

Conclusion: Microservices Are Just a Tool

Microservices aren’t an architectural style. They’re a deployment model—a way to scale and manage systems, not a blueprint for designing them. Lazy architects love microservices because they look impressive and shift the hard work to someone else. But without proper design principles like modularity, SOLID, and clean architecture, microservices can lead to more problems than they solve.

So before jumping on the microservices bandwagon, ask yourself: Do you need the complexity? Or are you just chasing a trend? And architects, maybe write some code—it’ll keep you grounded and remind you that good architecture is about solving problems, not creating them.

Remember: microservices aren’t magic. They’re just another tool. Use them wisely—and buy your developers coffee for dealing with the chaos you create.

Acknowledgment

Credit to Uncle Bob Martin for his insights on this topic. For more on his perspective, check out his blog post here.