[throwanem]

> Monoliths can use the same approach without nearly as much complexity

Do they?

> The sweet spot seems to be services where large chunks of the application operate independently.

Which could be said to be a design choice in many cases, perhaps even most.

[Retric]

> Do they?

Ideally OOP should treat each object like a microservice with an interface, independent data store, and test suite. I have seen several applications that do this, but a big ball of mud is also common, so it depends on the team.

PS: IMO, I think something is lost when languages don't have both objects and records. Passing around structured data can make for a clean design, but people get stuck on the idea that data and computation must be linked which makes it harder to have clean separation between different parts of your application. Function X is used by A, and B so now you can't change X without impacting A and B. Wait if we make a sub class then...

[throwanem]

Ideally a lot of things would be other than they are. There's a cogent argument to be made that the microservice architecture offers value in making a big ball of mud harder to create. Of course, there's also a pertinent question to be asked about whether one big ball of mud is really that much worse than several smaller ones flying in loose formation.

"It depends on the team" is probably about as close as it's possible to come to a single right answer here.

PS: I absolutely agree.