What takes down your biggest sale of the year isn't total load, it's the hot key: one hot partition that throttles while the rest of the table sits idle. Space-based architecture fixes that by taking the database out of the critical path. On AWS serverless you inherit the principle, not the literal implementation, and most projects don't even need it.

The biggest mistake in serverless architecture isn't technical, it's organizational. Without Domain-Driven Design, you sell team autonomy and deliver the opposite: a distributed monolith dressed up as microservices.

The difference between the architect who applies patterns and the one who understands them is the same as between the coach who copies formations and the one who understands the game.