GraphQL eliminates the n+1 problem for the client by pushing it to the server. Generally, the client<->backend connection is slow and spiky, and the backend<->db connection is fast and stable, so this trade-off made sense for Facebook as they had more and more mobile users connecting via 3G networks in developing countries.

N+1s are a fundamentally a data modeling and querying issue.

People who complain about GraphQL having a lot of N+1s are complaining about their lack of fundamental knowledge. You can build a GraphQL with minimal N+1s and you can build a “standard” API with loads of N+1s

I made this related comment about N+1 on a netflix graphql post a few days ago... some of the responses might be interesting to you.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36382212

  > one of the reasons I was told it was great was because it solves/avoids the n+1 problem

So, the thing about GraphQL is that it's a _specification_, in the same way that REST or gRPC are specifications.

There's nothing inherent in either GraphQL or REST that admits or prevents the N+1 problem. You have endpoints with business logic (or in GQL's case, "resolvers") and there's no telling what's inside of those methods code.

It's true that GraphQL was built to integrate with tools like a "Dataloader" to solve "N+1", but you could just as validly be using a Dataloader in your REST or gRPC API endpoints.

Sorry to hear you have an ill informed tech lead :(

I have used Dataloaders in the past in both Go and Typescript and it just about solves the issue automatically. Dataloader is a specific library that is copied for different languages that allows you to write code that looks like N+1, but it will group the N part into batches, so it becomes just 1+1. It’s kind of weird to explain, but it should be easy to understand once you start working with them.

It doesn’t solve it, but it lets you build a system that solves it for all future queries going forward. Think of it as a platform for taking endpoint specifications (ie GraphQL queries) and satisfying them efficiently. You have to build the part which makes it efficient, but once that’s done, it’s done.