🦥 Microservices For Dummies

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Welcome to this weeks Sloth Bytes.

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Sloth’s hands and feet are shaped like hooks

Sloth’s hands and feet are permanently curled into a hook-like arrangement and have very specialized muscles and tendons—this allows them to hang from any limb using almost no energy.

Microservices for Dummies

You’ve probably heard or will hear the term “microservice” from developers.

Let me give you a quick introduction you to microservices and explain when and why you should use them.

What Are Microservices?

Think of a big programming application. It has millions of lines of code, hundreds of files that do a bunch of different things:

Authentication, Payments, Notifications, Infrastructure, Mobile app, Web app, etc.

When you bundle these together, you get what’s called a Monolith/Monolithic architecture.

In simple terms, it’s just a giant codebase that has everything together.

Now imagine breaking the codebase into smaller, independent pieces that work together.

That's microservices - small, independent services that each do one thing well.

Why Break Up a Monolith?

Because sometimes big applications become:

• Hard to change

• Slow to deploy

• Difficult to scale

• A nightmare to maintain

• Too complex for new developers

Real World Example

Let's say you're building an e-commerce site like Amazon

If you have it as a Monolith it would look like this:

• One big application

• One database

• One deployment

• All features tightly coupled

Now if you broke it up into Microservices, it would look like this:

• Products Service (catalog)

• Orders Service (shopping)

• Payment Service (money)

• User Service (accounts)

• Each with its own database and team

When Do You Need Microservices?

A lot of developers have mixed opinions when it comes to microservices.

Some love it, some don’t, but here are some signs where it wouldn’t hurt to have microservices:

• Multiple teams stepping on each other

• Different parts need different scaling

• Deployment takes forever

• Changes are scary

• New features are hard to add

• Different parts need different technologies

You probably don't need them if:

• Small application (99% of your personal projects)

• Single team

• Simple business logic

• Limited resources

• Quick prototype needed

• Easy to maintain currently

The Good Parts

1. Independent Development

   • Teams work separately

   • Choose their own tools

   • Deploy when ready

2. Better Scaling

   • Scale busy services only

   • Handle traffic spikes better

   • Save resources

3. Faster Development

   • Smaller codebases

   • Easier to understand

   • Quicker deployments

4. Better Reliability

   • One service down ≠ system down

   • Easier to fix issues

   • Less risky deployments

The Not-So-Good Parts

1. More Complexity

   • Services need to communicate

   • Data consistency challenges

   • More moving parts

2. Higher Costs

   • More servers needed

   • More monitoring needed

   • More maintenance needed

3. Development Challenges

   • Local setup is harder

   • Testing is more complex

   • Debugging across services

Should You Switch?

Ask yourself:

• Is your monolith causing real problems?

• Do you have the resources?

• Is your team ready?

• Can you handle the complexity?

• Do the benefits outweigh the costs?

I’d be surprised if ANY of your personal projects would become this complex to need microservices, but it is good to know once you work professionally.

Now remember,

Don't switch to microservices because it's cool. Switch because it solves real problems!

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*A message from our sponsor.

Thank you to everyone who submitted 😃 

levi-manoel, Risamc, py-JAY, SDKwapis, porrrq, DeveloperCraig, JamesHarryT, RelyingEarth87, nhillemann, Maxime-R-Hub, acollinsMAD and ravener.

Rhyme Time

Create a function that returns true if two lines rhyme and false otherwise. For the purposes of this exercise, two lines rhyme if the last word from each sentence contains the same vowels.

Examples

doesRhyme("Sam I am!", "Green eggs and ham.")
output = True
doesRhyme("Sam I am!", "Green eggs and HAM.")
output = True
# Capitalization and punctuation should not matter.
doesRhyme("You're built like a seat", "I bet you like to eat")
output = True
doesRhyme("You are off to the races", "a splendid day.")
output = False
doesRhyme("and frequently do?", "you gotta move.")
output = False

Notes

• Case insensitive.

• Here we are disregarding cases like "thyme" and "lime".

• We are also disregarding cases like "away" and "today" (which technically rhyme, even though they contain different vowels).

How To Submit Answers

Reply with

• A link to your solution (github, twitter, personal blog, portfolio, replit, etc)

• or if you’re on the web version leave a comment!

• If you want to be mentioned here, I’d prefer if you sent a GitHub link or Replit!

Another video????

Yep I made another video.

I tried my best to explain DeepSeek.

What do you think about Sloth News?

That’s all from me!

Have a great week, be safe, make good choices, and have fun coding.

If I made a mistake or you have any questions, feel free to comment below or reply to the email!

See you all next week.