In this video, I start by breaking down a very common system design decision: monolith vs microservices. I use an e-commerce example (products, category, dashboard, orders, payments) because it’s easy to visualize, but the same thinking applies to any real application. In a monolith, everything lives inside one application with a single codebase and usually a single database. In microservices, I split the same application into independent services—each service is its own app, with its own codebase and its own database. Then I evaluate both approaches across practical points you’ll face in real teams: codebase structure, deployment model, scalability, testing complexity, team autonomy, fault isolation, and operational/DevOps overhead. For example, in monolith if category has a bug you end up deploying the whole app, but in microservices you can fix and deploy only the category service. Microservices also let you scale only the hot service during traffic spikes (like search during a sale) and even choose different tech stacks per service (Java here, NodeJS there, SQL vs NoSQL). My takeaway is simple: don’t treat this like “one is always better.” If you’re building an MVP or you’re a startup with limited budget, start monolith. If you’re an enterprise with large teams, heavy traffic, and you’re ready to pay the complexity tax, microservices can be the right move.