Microservices Reality - Stop Fighting Environments and Mock Your Dependencies

Discover how to overcome the harsh realities of microservices development in this 46-minute conference talk by Tom Akehurst, creator of WireMock. Explore why the promised land of decoupled services often leads to heavy interconnections, broken development environments, and frustratingly slow productivity. Learn advanced techniques including observability, contract testing, and realistic simulation that enable teams to move from fighting fragile environments to shipping value faster. Examine failed decoupling strategies such as gatekeeping, full environments, and smart environments, then understand why API mocking and simulation provide the solution. Address the three biggest objections to mocking at scale: realism, effort, and drift. Master the composition of three critical artifacts - observation, simulation, and contract - while exploring API observability, simulation, and contract testing definitions. Leverage AI productivity through LLMs for mock generation and discover two key workflows: trusting producer-provided contracts and generating contracts from traffic. Watch a practical demonstration of catching API drift using WireMock, Optic, and Prism. Explore future developments including Arazzo workflows and OpenAPI overlays, understand the impact of eBPF and service mesh on API observation, and learn when to reserve end-to-end tests for true integration risk scenarios.