Thomas Wolf recently shared his observations on the shift in software architecture in the era of AI dominance. He forecasts a reversal of the previous microservices trend.
Developments
Wolf's core argument is that as rewriting source code and comprehending large, external codebases becomes incredibly cheap thanks to AI, the incentive to rely on complex software supply chains will decrease. Instead, 'monolith' structures could return because they are easier to manage and optimize with the help of large language models.
Why it matters
This is a contrasting perspective to the modern architectural thinking in many software companies. If this prediction is correct, engineers need to prepare their skills to manage large-scale codebases with AI instead of solely focusing on breaking down services, helping to reduce cloud infrastructure operational costs, which are becoming increasingly expensive.