API = Some REST and HTTP, right? RIGHT?!

Let's be honest: many of our so-called "REST" APIs aren't REST. They're just JSON-RPC over HTTP, with versioning challenges, brittle integrations, clumsy error handling, and a maintenance burden we all know too well. Let's do something about this! We’ll go straight to the patterns that matter in production, tackling the real-world challenges head-on: building evolvable versioning strategies, designing sane error responses, providing clear API contracts, and demystifying the practical use of hypermedia (HATEOAS). You'll leave with practical, battle-tested approaches for building APIs that are maintainable and scalable. We'll also discuss when to use REST and when alternatives like GraphQL or gRPC are a better tool for the job. All demos use Jakarta EE and MicroProfile, but the patterns can be applied to any modern web stack of your choosing.