The DRY Principle and Micro-Frontends

It is all about Reuse

“One of the most common misconceptions about Micro-Frontends is that they are all about reuse”

- Cam Jackson.

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The DRY Principle

What if we apply the ”Don’t Repeat Yourself” Principle to Distributed Frontends?

A Common Scenario

Reuse is a nice idea in theory

In practice, Reuse is really hard to achieve and sometimes causes more work than duplicating the same feature.

Ownership Friction

When a reused feature that wasn’t designed with the third-party use cases in mind, it leads to conflict and at the end the effort is duplicated anyway.

So, do we reinvent the wheel again and again?

It depends...

Adding abstractions of top of Micro-Frontends could lead to tightly coupled components and removing the benefits of independent deployments.

It is all about the simple things

How do you reuse Micro-Frontends effectively?

Reuse is easier when you apply it to things that are:

- Small

- Atomic

• Static

Reuse is a nice side effect of Micro-Frontends, not the target.

• Do not to force the reuse, just let it naturally occur.
• Setup teams in charge of the reused modules having a clear contract between the features and the consumers.
• Preserve the ability to deploy independently to avoid blockers.
• Watch out for scope creep.

Examples of effective Reuse

Conclusion and Recommendations