Vish's Journey in Computer Science

The recent work assigned to us regarding REST API services has been very enlightening to me. I have found that REST API’s form the heart of Microservice architecture as well. REST API’s help Software Engineering Teams to break monolith Software application code into modular, atomic and maintainable code services. To explore this further, I read a blog post titled “Designing RESTful APIs for Microservices Architecture” https://blog.xapihub.io/2024/04/17/Designing-RESTful-APIs-for-Microservices-Architecture.html from XapiHub. This post explains how REST API design plays a critical role in making microservices effective, reliable, and loosely coupled. Since we are learning how clean design and good processes improve software quality, I felt this resource fit directly into our course themes.

The blog begins by explaining that microservices rely heavily on APIs to communicate with each other. REST is the most common choice because it is simple, stateless, and works well across different services and technologies. The author highlights several best practices such as using clear resource-based URLs, handling errors consistently, applying versioning to avoid breaking clients, and building truly independent services that do not secretly depend on each other’s data models. The blog also emphasizes monitoring, documentation, and strong authentication practices, which are especially important when many services are talking to each other across the network.

I selected this resource because I found it very simple with lot of simple to understand diagrams and easier to understand language. I have always found microservices interesting but a little overwhelming. When people talk about dozens or hundreds of services communicating through REST, I sometimes imagine chaos. This blog made the topic feel more understandable by breaking it into practical design rules. Since our class focuses on professional processes, documentation, and maintainability, learning how microservices stay organized through REST guidelines felt very relevant. Also, I know many modern data-engineering and enterprise systems use microservices—exactly the direction I want to grow my career in.

One of the biggest things I learned is how important statelessness is. I always assumed microservices were powerful mainly because of their independence, but I didn’t realize how much stateful communication can ruin scalability. Another takeaway was API versioning. Before this, I didn’t think deeply about how older clients might break when an API changes. The blog’s explanation helped me understand why backward compatibility is a core part of good software process management.

It appears that the path ahead to be a successful Software Engineer is overwhelming with so much to comprehend and implement. We have to be good not just at programming languages but also such principles of effective Application Engineering. This blog helped me connect industry best practices to what we’ve been learning in class about writing clean, maintainable, and well-designed software systems.