[programminggeek]

I think the biggest reason people are switching to microservices is that it enforces protocols and documentation between components that would otherwise never be created.

Microservices create a boundary and that forces you to create a request/response protocol to enforce that boundary. You also have to create documentation for it to be useful.

There is nothing stopping you from creating your app as a bunch of small services without the added complexity of microservices/SOA. Each slice of your system could be an isolated library with a stronger enforced protocol and documentation and you'd get largely the same benefits without having to deal with the deployment headache.

The reason people don't do that is if they build isolated components in the same monolitic system, nobody takes the time to create a proper protocol and documentation.

The only way people seem to be willing to give separate services the appropriate design respect is to physically separate them and solve them as an isolated problem. The physical separation forces better behavior for microservices to even be useful.

It doesn't help that most languages have really weak capabilities to enforce strong protocols/boundaries beyond a simple type checker via complier. A language like JS, Python, PHP, Ruby, etc. don't even have a compiler so the ability/desire to create strong protocols in most code is almost nonexistent to most developers.