The Monolithic Era

Traditionally, web applications were built as monolithic structures — single, unified codebases responsible for everything from UI to data persistence. This offered simplicity but presented challenges as apps grew in complexity and scale.

In a monolithic architecture, all components are interconnected and interdependent. Even small changes require testing and deploying the entire application, making the development cycle longer and increasing the risk of introducing regressions.

Key Limitations of Monolithic Architecture:

Scaling challenges: You must scale the entire application rather than just the components under heavy load
Technology constraints: The whole application typically uses the same stack, limiting flexibility
Complexity: As the application grows, the codebase becomes harder to understand and maintain
Development bottlenecks: Larger teams face coordination challenges when working on a single codebase

The Rise of Microservices

Microservices emerged as organizations sought more scalable, flexible alternatives. This architectural style structures applications as collections of loosely coupled services, each implementing a specific business function.

Microservices communicate through well-defined APIs, typically over HTTP with REST or gRPC protocols. Each service can be developed, deployed, and scaled independently.

Benefits of Microservices

Improved scalability — services scale independently based on demand
Technology diversity — teams can select the best tools for each service
Development agility — smaller, focused teams work in parallel
Resilience — failures are isolated to individual services

Serverless: The Next Evolution

Serverless computing abstracts away infrastructure management entirely. Developers focus solely on writing code while cloud providers handle execution, scaling, and availability. Platforms like AWS Lambda, Google Cloud Functions, and Azure Functions enable deploying individual functions that run in response to events.

Hybrid Approaches and Modern Best Practices

In practice, many organizations adopt hybrid architectures that blend elements from different approaches. An application might use microservices for core business functionality while leveraging serverless for event processing.

The key to success lies not in blindly following trends, but in carefully evaluating options against your unique needs and constraints.