Interview Answer:
Monolithic and microservices architectures represent two fundamentally different approaches to building software systems. A monolithic architecture is structured as a single, cohesive application where all modules—authentication, business logic, data processing, UI, notifications, etc.—are built and deployed together. This structure simplifies the early stages of development because the entire application exists in one place, making debugging and testing straightforward. However, as the codebase grows, the monolith becomes harder to maintain, harder to scale selectively, and more prone to system-wide failures when any module experiences issues.
Microservices architecture breaks an application into multiple smaller, independently deployable services. Each service aligns with a specific business capability and communicates with others over lightweight protocols such as HTTP or gRPC. This approach allows teams to work autonomously, adopt different technologies per service, scale specific components, and release features without impacting the entire system. It enables higher agility, resilience, and organizational scalability.
The drawback is that microservices introduce substantial operational complexity. Engineers must manage service discovery, distributed tracing, API gateways, network failures, and data consistency issues. Testing requires orchestrating multiple services, and observability must be well-designed to track system behavior.
When to use each: Monolithic architectures are ideal for small teams, MVPs, early-stage products, and applications with limited complexity. They offer fast development cycles and minimal DevOps overhead. Microservices are suited for large-scale systems, organizations with mature DevOps culture, high user loads, and complex domains requiring independent scaling. Choosing between them depends on team skill, operational maturity, scaling needs, and long-term product vision.
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