Why Coupling Matters
When I started building microservices, I made the classic mistake of letting services know too much about each other. A simple change in one service would ripple through three others, requiring coordinated deploys and late-night debugging sessions. That pain taught me the value of loose coupling.
Coupling is the degree to which one service depends on the internal details of another. Tight coupling means changes in one service force changes in others, making the system brittle and hard to evolve. Loose coupling means services interact through stable contracts, hiding their internals, so you can change one without touching the rest.
The Core Principles
1. Define Stable Contracts
