Target Audience

Senior Developers, Tech Leads, Aspiring Architects

Prerequisites

Experience with production systems

Description

This workshop is designed to bridge the gap between senior-level coding and high-level system design, equipping participants with the mental models needed to architect resilient, enterprise-grade systems.

We move beyond simple implementations to explore the critical trade-offs between Modular Monoliths and Microservices, focusing on long-term maintainability and scalability. By mastering advanced patterns like Sagas, CQRS, and Hexagonal Architecture, you will learn to decouple core business logic from volatile infrastructure.

The goal is to transform experienced developers into System Architects capable of building fault-tolerant environments that can gracefully handle the complexities of modern distributed computing.

Main Topics

Defining the System Boundary

• Modular Monoliths vs. Microservices: When to distribute and when to stay unified. Identifying “Bounded Contexts.”
• Hexagonal Architecture (Ports & Adapters): Decoupling the business logic from the infrastructure (Databases, External APIs, UI).
• Clean Architecture Principles: Enforcing dependency rules to ensure the system is testable and independent of frameworks.

Distributed Design Patterns

• The Saga Pattern: Managing long-running transactions and data consistency across multiple services without distributed locks.
• CQRS (Command Query Responsibility Segregation): Separating read and write models to optimize performance and security.
• Sidecar Pattern: Offloading cross-cutting concerns (logging, monitoring, security) to a separate process (e.g., Service Mesh).
• The BFF Pattern (Backend for Frontend): Optimizing API responses for different clients (Mobile vs. Web).

Communication & Resilience Patterns

• Synchronous vs. Asynchronous: REST and gRPC vs. Event-Driven Messaging (Kafka, RabbitMQ).
• Fault Tolerance Patterns: * Circuit Breaker: Preventing cascading failures in a distributed mesh.

1. • Retries & Exponential Backoff: Handling transient failures intelligently.
   • Bulkhead Pattern: Isolating resources to ensure one failing component doesn’t sink the whole ship.

Key Learning Outcomes

• Systemic Thinking: Ability to evaluate whether a microservices or modular monolith approach is better for a specific business case.
• Infrastructure Independence: Designing systems where the “Business Logic” is the center, not the database.
• Resilience Mastery: Building systems that can fail gracefully without taking down the entire enterprise.