https://speakerdeck.com/edburns 2026-10-13 19:50:08 -0400 I was about ten years into my Java career when I had spoken at enough conferences, and befriended enough speakers, that my sense for the hype cycle had been sharpened by the collective skepticism of the speaker jet-set. That was two decades ago. We've all heard the latest hype about what AI agents can do well. Less hyped is what can go wrong: non-determinism, DRY violations, hallucinated APIs, token cost, unreviewable code, and code reviews that start to improve the code, only to keep going until the code is actually broken. This talk makes the case that it's the time-honed boring things about Java that keep the agents honest. Successful agentic development maximizes agent strengths — speed, breadth, fearless exploration, tolerance for boilerplate — while backstopping their weaknesses: non-determinism, dependency sprawl, inconsistent error handling, and code that works but nobody wants to maintain. Here are the 10 boring reasons: 1. Type system 2. Testing ecosystem 3. Backwards compatibility culture 4. Deep static analysis 5. Build system maturity and dependency management 6. Code formatting and style enforcement 7. Virtual threads and structured concurrency 8. Observability stack 9. JVM performance tuning 10. Breadth of deployment options For each, I'll show the specific agentic failure mode it addresses. I'll close with a practical checklist for making your Java development process agent-safe, and tie it up with the message that to move forward, you have to go back. I was about ten years into my Java career when I had spoken at enough conferences, and befriended enough speakers, that my sense for the hype cycle had been sharpened by the collective skepticism of the speaker jet-set. That was two decades ago. We've all heard the latest hype about what AI agents can do well. Less hyped is what can go wrong: non-determinism, DRY violations, hallucinated APIs, token cost, unreviewable code, and code reviews that start to improve the code, only to keep going until the code is actually broken. This talk makes the case that it's the time-honed boring things about Java that keep the agents honest. Successful agentic development maximizes agent strengths — speed, breadth, fearless exploration, tolerance for boilerplate — while backstopping their weaknesses: non-determinism, dependency sprawl, inconsistent error handling, and code that works but nobody wants to maintain. Here are the 10 boring reasons: 1. Type system 2. Testing ecosystem 3. Backwards compatibility culture 4. Deep static analysis 5. Build system maturity and dependency management 6. Code formatting and style enforcement 7. Virtual threads and structured concurrency 8. Observability stack 9. JVM performance tuning 10. Breadth of deployment options For each, I'll show the specific agentic failure mode it addresses. I'll close with a practical checklist for making your Java development process agent-safe, and tie it up with the message that to move forward, you have to go back. Tue, 13 Oct 2026 00:00:00 -0400 https://speakerdeck.com/edburns/10-boring-reasons-why-java-is-the-best-ecosystem-for-agentic-development https://speakerdeck.com/edburns/10-boring-reasons-why-java-is-the-best-ecosystem-for-agentic-development Transform your legacy Java apps into AI-powered systems without starting from scratch. From CRUD to Cognitive is your guide to a smarter, AI-driven future for enterprise apps! Join Ed Burns (Principal Architect for Java on Azure) to learn how to bring intelligence into traditional Java applications. Tasked with a "do something with AI" mandate? This session shows Java enthusiasts how to embed powerful GenAI capabilities into your apps. Using open-source frameworks and models, you'll learn to enhance workflows with Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), implement AI tools like form auto-fillers, streamline operations with smart chatbots, and optimize workflows with AI triggers—all without ripping apart your existing systems. Transform your legacy Java apps into AI-powered systems without starting from scratch. From CRUD to Cognitive is your guide to a smarter, AI-driven future for enterprise apps! Join Ed Burns (Principal Architect for Java on Azure) to learn how to bring intelligence into traditional Java applications. Tasked with a "do something with AI" mandate? This session shows Java enthusiasts how to embed powerful GenAI capabilities into your apps. Using open-source frameworks and models, you'll learn to enhance workflows with Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), implement AI tools like form auto-fillers, streamline operations with smart chatbots, and optimize workflows with AI triggers—all without ripping apart your existing systems. Tue, 13 Oct 2026 00:00:00 -0400 https://speakerdeck.com/edburns/from-crud-to-cognitive-modernizing-legacy-java-apps-with-embedded-ai https://speakerdeck.com/edburns/from-crud-to-cognitive-modernizing-legacy-java-apps-with-embedded-ai