Build Speed a less talked about Micro Services feature.

I was deploying a small app, you could call it a Micro Service, today to our test/demo environment at work and found a bug where I hadn't implemented a shared API correctly.

  • I realised my mistake.
  • Walked over to my development machine (the test/demo environment is physically and logically separated from the rest of the network).
  • Fixed the bug. 
  • Ran tests.
  • Pushed to CI. 
  • Took the installer generated from the CI build walked back over.
  • Installed the update. 
All in less than 5 minutes.  

I always hear about how Micro Services are quick to deploy, resilient to failure and scale-able, but rarely do I hear about the fact that they're quick to build.  This speed is because the compile time is lower and the test time is lower.  Overall it means that working on a Micro Service, or a small application in general is just more productive from a development point of view. 

Micro Services is the buzz word at the moment so you probably didn't need another reason to consider them as an architecture. But just in case you did, here it is . 

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