So many people have very little respect for the effects of the fact that this field is so ridiculously young, including the fact that all of these definitions are incredibly wishy washy.
Being able to take a statement like “an external dependency is a microservice” and not completely discounting the point being made is incredibly valuable.
No, sorry, the field is not ridiculously young. The issue is the technical decision making process is now delegated to "ridiculously" inexperienced developers.
> an external dependency is a microservice
Regret to disagree again. Flip that and you have a leg to stand on at least: A microservice is an external dependency. Service defines the architectural semantics of the dependency. Micro scopes the services provided.
The industry of which we speak is not in the sciences. Maybe engineering. The earliest recognition of software engineering seems to only go back to the 1980s, but there is a lot of debate as to whether it is even that. It's probably closer to gardening. Unfortunately, the industry is too new to have yet fully recognized what it is.
Software engineering is software engineering, but the process of creating software may often be more gardening than engineering.
I mean, what is it about haphazardly trying out an approach you read about on a random blog written by someone who has a different problem to solve than you says engineering? In my world engineering implies rigour, adherence to the data, etc.
There can be engineering in software. There can be science in software. But I'm not sure that means software work is categorically either engineering or science. I expect you will find that there is a lot of fad chasing and leaps of faith in hopes of stumbling upon something that will yield.
To the specific topic of conversation, where do you find the science or engineering, and not just people throwing shit in their plot and seeing what grows?
So many people have very little respect for the effects of the fact that this field is so ridiculously young, including the fact that all of these definitions are incredibly wishy washy.
Being able to take a statement like “an external dependency is a microservice” and not completely discounting the point being made is incredibly valuable.