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Monoliths are bad and so are microservices!

/ Software Architecture

They’re not! They’re just different ways to solve a problem. Yes, you fell for the clickbait title! But you’re already here, so why not read on? Here’s an important question: Are microservices better than monoliths? Consultant answer: — It depends. The answer depends mostly on who you ask. If you ask someone solving problems with microservices, they’ll probably answer “YES”. If you ask someone working with monoliths, well, it depends whether they know about microservices or not.

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Go from Node.js app to microservices with MONOLITHSPL/T

I’ve been working a lot with microservices in the past couple of years. It is during this time that I found how many issues can arise from putting an accent on delivery while disregarding architecture. This is why I decided to create MONOLITHSPL/T. I want to help businesses migrate their monolithic Node.js applications to a microservices architecture, improve the quality of their products as well as their overall delivery. My goal is to provide clear, actionable steps, to move away from poor architectural decisions made under pressure.

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How I built a product that failed and won

It was almost a year ago that I started building a self-destructing tweets app, just like Snapchat’s snaps… … and nobody used it. The not-so-short intro In 2017 I set out to create a self-destructing tweets application. Nothing impressive but it helped me learn a lot of things. First, I set out to design it all by myself — failed miserably. At that point I reluctantly decided that the best thing to do is to use a ready-made theme.

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Two strategies for migrating an existing application to a new framework

Finally got your migration budget approved? Is that Angular vs. React vs. Vue giving you headaches? Not sure whether it’s worth moving to Node.js microservices, because your team already knows JavaScript or if you should have them learn Go? Wondering what options you have, to migrate your existing product to a new framework? These are all valid questions anyone should ask when planning to rewrite their application/product. If you’re going shopping for new tech, here are two options you can use, to migrate your existing application to a new framework.

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Five reasons big software rewrites fail

This article is part of a larger series that will lay out the truth behind technology migration and decoupling projects. I’ve taken part in a couple of BIG REWRITE™️ and DECOUPLING™️ and SCALABILITY™️ projects in the past 3 years, so I decided to share the whole truth behind why many such projects fail. I hope this article and the other five sitting in the editing pipeline will help you spot bad trends and do course correction early on.

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Technical advice for startups

TL;DR Stop creating monoliths. Stop the brainless, head-first dive into development. Buy the cheapest notebook and some pens and start scribbling. You’ll thank yourselves! The story From time to time, I get the chance to interact with tech startups and I formed the nasty habit of asking about their codebase. Whenever I ask this question, I get two types of answers depending on who’s answering: The CEO, or any non-technical C-level person, almost always complain they’re moving too slow because of poorly written code.

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X in a box - containers for developers video series?

For quite some time I wanted to help developers better understand Docker containers. I’ve been working with containers for the past 2.5 years and like most of you, I was just a full stack JavaScript developer. I had to learn how to use Docker containers with no previous knowledge and little or no guidance. It was like being thrown off a plane with an umbrella instead of a parachute. This wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.

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Top 5 things to consider when choosing a new technology

There is a saying that naming things is the most difficult part of software development and it is 100% true. At the same time, choosing technologies, libraries, platforms or programming languages can be just as hard. There are many aspects to consider, besides how we feel about it or if it is trendy or not. Judging a framework, for example, only by its popularity and how bad you want to work with it, without looking at some numbers is a thing I call Resume-Driven Development (RDD) and has nothing to do with healthy software development practices.

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