Monolith vs microservices & distributed basics
P38.distribution.01 · Audience: guest, it-ml, language-pro · Prerequisites: APIs & service design
The moment a call crosses a network, it can fail in a new way: it might have happened, but you never heard back. This module is about designing for that world — when to split a system at all, and the two primitives that make distributed calls survivable: retry with backoff and idempotency.
ⓘ Concept: Distribution is a cost, not a goal
Why it matters — Splitting too early buys distributed-systems pain for no benefit; splitting on a real force (scale, team autonomy, isolation) along a clean seam is what pays off.
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🎓 Practice ladder
2 graded rungs · ~24 minBuild a retry-with-backoff wrapper and an idempotency wrapper, then reason about monoliths vs microservices in an interview-style prompt.
Rung 1 — idempotent retries & backoff
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Rung 2 — monolith vs microservices (interview)
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That completes P38 — and with it the whole Production Engineering domain: you can package, gate, observe, and shape a Python system into resilient services.
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