In software development, few challenges rival the complexity and importance of backward compatibility, a challenge that only magnifies at the crossroads of multiple teams.

However, there is a solution.

This session will serve as an introduction to the Smithy IDL (smithy.io), the powerful JVM tooling for Smithy, and the marvelous Smithy4s (https://disneystreaming.github.io/smithy4s/), a Smithy code generator for Scala. You will explore the power of a contract-first approach using Smithy to define service contracts, the JVM tooling to write custom validations and guarantee compatibility, and Smithy4s to transform service contracts into actionable binding elements within Scala applications.