Conference Report #

This year was the 5th edition of CodeCrafts in Vienna and it again felt like a very professionally organized conference with a clear focus and audience. The event was sold out with around 600 attendees and mostly attracted senior engineers, architects and tech leads.

The conference took place on May 21 in the beautiful Expedithalle Wien and followed the same successful single-track format as previous years. No rushing between rooms, no fear of missing out, just one shared experience for everyone.

What I personally liked most is that CodeCrafts continues to avoid the typical “AI will replace everything tomorrow” style of conference messaging. The talks were generally pragmatic, grounded and focused on long-term software engineering problems instead of short-term trends.

Venue #

The venue, Expedithalle within the Ankerbrot Fabrik area, was a very good fit for the conference. The industrial style hall created a relaxed but still professional atmosphere. The organization overall was smooth and well executed throughout the day. The hall got a bit warm at times, especially during the afternoon sessions, but overall the setup worked well. Food quality was good and coffee, drinks and snacks were available all day long. The only downside was the long queues during lunch breaks, although this is probably unavoidable with a sold out event of this size.

One thing CodeCrafts continues to do well is creating enough space for conversations between talks. The pacing never felt stressful and the networking aspect worked naturally. In the evening, many attendees stayed for wine and beer which made it easy to continue discussions with other engineers and speakers.

Memorable Talks #

Oliver Drotbohm — Domain-centric? Why Hexagonal And Onion Architecture Are Answers To The Wrong Question #

Oliver gave one of the strongest architecture talks of the day. His core message was that many teams focus too much on technical layering and not enough on cohesion and business boundaries. Hexagonal and Onion Architecture are often treated as very different approaches, but in practice they are mostly variations of layered architecture.

A particularly interesting point was the idea that package structures and visible technical layers often create low cohesion. Business changes still end up touching files all across the codebase. Instead, he argued for more domain-oriented vertical slices where internal technical structure becomes an implementation detail hidden behind module boundaries. He also showed tooling around Spring Modulith and a VSCode plugin prototype which visualizes domain structures instead of purely technical package layouts. That was a refreshing direction compared to the usual architecture diagrams developers tend to create.

Overall the talk felt very pragmatic and aligned well with the reality of maintaining large enterprise systems over many years.

Armin Ronacher — A Year Of Agents #

Armin delivered probably the most discussed talk of the conference. Unlike many AI presentations today, this one came from the perspective of an experienced software engineer actually working with agents daily instead of from marketing or investor hype.

One of the most memorable concepts was what he called “agent psychosis”, where developers generate massive AI-created pull requests with thousands of changes while understanding very little of what was actually produced. His point that “generation is cheap, review is not” summarized the current state of AI-assisted development extremely well.

He also talked about adding “good friction” back into software development. Things like linting, reviews, dependency checks and security boundaries are not obstacles, they are mechanisms that keep humans involved and help maintain understanding of systems. A particularly interesting example was his open source project around isolated disposable environments for agents, designed to reduce damage potential when agents interact with sensitive systems or secrets. The overall tone of the talk was pragmatic, sober and honest. AI tools are clearly useful and already changing software engineering significantly, but blindly removing humans from the loop is dangerous. The talk avoided both extreme hype and extreme pessimism, which made it stand out from many current AI conference sessions.

Other Themes Throughout The Conference #

Several talks revolved around Domain-Driven Design, system boundaries, cohesion and organizational structure. At first glance this might feel repetitive, but it actually reflects an important shift happening in software engineering. As AI tools continue to automate more coding tasks, understanding business domains, architecture, tradeoffs and communication becomes more valuable for engineers. Multiple speakers indirectly reinforced this idea from different angles.

Another noticeable trend was how much more mature the AI discussions have become compared to previous years. The tone was far less sensationalist. Instead of “AI changes everything”, most speakers discussed concrete tradeoffs, risks, productivity gains and organizational consequences in a more matter-of-fact way. The hype phase seems to slowly evolve into a more realistic engineering conversation about the good, the bad and the ugly parts of working with AI systems.

Final Thoughts #

CodeCrafts 2026 again proved why it has built a strong reputation in the European software conference scene. The single-track format, experienced speakers and pragmatic focus created a conference that felt valuable especially for senior engineers and architects.

Rather than chasing trends, the conference focused on topics that will probably remain important long after current frameworks and tools are replaced: architecture, system boundaries, evolvability, organizational design and engineering judgment.

For me personally, the conference worked best whenever talks connected technical decisions back to business realities and human understanding instead of purely discussing technology in isolation.