[choeger]

Yeah and the inter-service specification lives where? How is it monitored, tested, enforced?

I have the feeling that with the (quite possible!) addition of an inter-service codebase we would end up with a distributed monolith, i.e., a program that doesn't target a single computer but a particular substrate. I don't know whether that's a good design, though.

Benefits: The program becomes more transparent and resilient to nonfunctional problems. It is also much easier to replace parts of the program. Downsides: Executing on a developer's workstation (critical for productivity and quality, IMO) might become harder. Efficiency gets reduced by orders of magnitude in certain spots.