[flagged]
Really less than 1% of systems need to be distributed. Are you Google? No? Then you probably don't need it.
The rest is just for fun. Or, well, pain. Usually pain.
> Obviously that ship has sailed for you, but I mean in the general sense.
In the general sense, no, you don't need a distributed system. Even if you have billions of dollars worth of revenue - no, you don't need a distributed system. I know, because I've worked on monoliths that service hundreds of thousands of users and generate billions in revenue.
If you're making YouTube, maybe you need a distributed system. Are you making YouTube? Probably not.
You can, of course, choose to make a distributed system anyway. If you want to decrease your development velocity 1000x and introduce unbelievable amounts of complexity and risk.
Ask yourself: how does an enterprise with 1000 engineers manage to push a feature out 1000x slower than two dudes in a garage? Well, processes, but also architecture.
Distributed systems slow down your development velocity by many orders of magnitude, because they create extremely fragile systems and maintenance becomes extremely high risk.
We're all just so used to the fragility and risk we might think it's normal. But no, it's really not, it's just bad. Don't do that.