by threethirtytwo | 2025-12-14 01:06:56+00:00
False. Protobuf solves nothing.

1. Protobuf requires a monorepo to work correctly. Shared types must be checked across all repos and services simulateneously. Without a monorepo or some crazy work around mechanism this won't work. Think about it. These type checkers need everything at the same version to correctly check everything.

2. Even with a monorepo, deployment is a problem. Unless you do simultaneous deploys if one team upgrades there service and another team doesn't the Shared type is incompatible simply because you used microservices and polyrepos to allow teams to move async instead of insync. It's a race condition in distributed systems and it's theoremtically true. Not solved at all because it can't be solved by logic and math.

Just kidding. It can be solved but you're going to have to change definitions of your axioms aka of what is currently a microservice, monolith, monorepo and polyrepo. If you allow simultaneous deploys or pushes to microservices and polyrepos these problems can be solved but then can you call those things microservices or polyrepos? They look more like monorepos or monoliths... hmmm maybe I'll call it "distributed monolith".... See we are hitting this problem already.

>Here’s an analogy. Suppose you have a monolithic app and a SQL database. The situation is just like when you change the schema of the SQL database: of course you have application code that correctly deals with the previous schema and the new schema during the ALTER TABLE. And the foundational wire format that you use to talk to the SQL database does not change. It’s at a layer below the schema.

You are just describing the problem I provided. We call "monoliths" monoliths but technically a monolith must interact with a secondary service called a database. We have no choice in the matter. The monolith and microservice of course does not refer to that problem which SUFFERS from all the same problems as microservices.

>This is entirely a solved problem. If you think this is a fundamental problem of microservices, then you do not grok microservices. If you think having microservices means simultaneous deployments, you also do not grok microservices.

No it's not. Not at all. It's a problem that's lived with. I have two modules in a monolith. ANY change that goes into the mainline branch or deploy is type checked and integration tested to provide maximum safety as integration tests and type checkers can check the two modules simultaneously.

Imagine those two modules as microservices. Because they can be deployed at any time asynchronously, because they can be merged to the mainline branch at any time asynchronously They cannot be type checked or integration tested. Why? If I upgrade A which requires an upgrade to B but B is not upgraded yet, How do I type check both A and B at the same time? Axiomatically impossible. Nothing is solved. Just behavioral coping mechanisms to deal with the issue. That's the key phrase: behavioral coping mechanisms as opposed to automated statically checked safety based off of mathematical proof. Most of the arguments from your side will be consisting of this: "behavioral coping mechanisms"