Building Microservices: Designing Fine-Grained Systems

by Sam Newman

Our industry is a young one. This is something we seem to forget, and yet we have only been creating programs that run on what we recognize as computers for around 70 years. Therefore, we are constantly looking to other professions in an attempt to explain what we do. We aren’t medical doctors or engineers, but nor are we plumbers or electricians. Instead, we fall into some middle ground, which makes it hard for society to understand us, or for us to understand where we fit. So we borrow from other professions. We call ourselves software “engineers,” or “architects.” But we aren’t, are we? Architects and engineers have a rigor and discipline we could only dream of, and their importance in society is well understood. I remember talking to a friend of mine, the day before he became a qualified architect. “Tomorrow,” he said, “if I give you advice down at the pub about how to build something and it’s wrong, I get held to account. I could get sued, as in the eyes of the law I am now a qualified architect and I should be held responsible if I get it wrong.” The importance of these jobs to society means that there are required qualifications people have to meet. In the UK, for example, a minimum of seven years study is required before you can be called an architect. But these jobs are also based on a body of knowledge going back thousands of years. And us? Not quite. Which is also why I view most forms of IT certification as worthless, as we know so little about what good looks ...