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how I see distributed systems

what a microservices architecture looks like when I draw it from memory. no moving parts here — just the map, the neighborhoods, and a few notes to self. click any box if you want the long version.

the edgethe services — small, focused, replaceablestateevents & the slow laneuserscache-asideeventsconsumepsst — ~90% of readsnever actually reach the DBservices don’t call each other — they gossip through eventsone door. many rooms.fig. 1 — the system, from memoryClientbrowser · appCDN / Load Balancertraffic copAPI Gatewaysingle entry pointAuthstateless serviceOrderscore domainPaymentsmoves moneyRediscache · in-memoryPostgreSQLsource of truthKafkaevent backboneNotifierasync worker

click any box on the sketch…I wrote a note about each one, the way I’d explain it over coffee.

the whole idea, in five lines:

  1. ①a request lands at the front door — the gateway checks who you are and points you to the right room.
  2. ②reads try Redis first. the database is the backup plan, not the default.
  3. ③writes commit to PostgreSQL — the one box that is never allowed to lie.
  4. ④when something important happens, services publish a fact to Kafka instead of calling each other.
  5. ⑤slow work (emails, pushes, whatever) happens later in workers — nobody waits for it.