You’re building a new application, and suddenly, you’re stuck in an endless debate: microservices or monolith? It’s the software equivalent of choosing between a Swiss Army knife and a specialized toolkit. Both get the job done, but the wrong choice could mean wasted time, budget, or technical debt. Having guided teams through both architectures for over a decade, here’s my no-BS take on the tradeoffs — and how to avoid regrets.Performance: It’s Not Just About SpeedLet’s cut through the hype. Yes, microservices can scale effortlessly — in theory. Imagine an e-commerce app where the payment service autoscales during Black Friday traffic while the product catalog stays idle. That’s the dream. But here’s the kicker: those independently deployed services chat constantly over APIs. Every interaction introduces latency, and suddenly, your “scalable” system is bottlenecked by network calls. I’ve seen teams waste months optimizing service mesh configurations just to shave off milliseconds.