Talk details

Essentials* is Craft's new track for developers who want to grow strong foundations. Whether you're just starting out or filling key gaps, these inspiring talks from top speakers will help you level up and love the journey.

Many developers are familiar with concepts like clean architecture, hexagonal design, and microservices, but few have the opportunity to see what these principles look like in a production environment. This talk shares essential architectural insights from building and evolving a modern, working software landscape—straight from the trenches at iBOOD.com.

In this ESSENTIALS session, Sander Hoogendoorn breaks down the real-life architecture his team has developed over the past four years: pragmatic, service-based, loosely inspired by hexagonal principles, and shaped by continuous feedback, growth, and lots of learning.

You’ll discover:

• How do we design services around clear responsibilities and domain boundaries

• How we structure services internally with adapters, handlers, and domain logic

• Why consistency in APIs, naming, and folder structure really matters

• How we use patterns, types, and classes to keep code predictable and clean

• How we deal with data—reading, writing, caching, syncing, and evolving schemas

• How we test, deploy, monitor, and keep things moving without burning out

• And how we stay flexible enough to change all of it when we need to

This is not architecture in theory—it’s architecture that works. Backed by code examples in TypeScript, Node.js, and MongoDB, this talk is packed with practical techniques to help you level up your architectural thinking, even if you’re not working with microservices (yet).