Robert Munteanu is a Senior Engineer on Adobe’s AEM Core Cloud Foundation team. An Apache Software Foundation member and PMC chair for Apache Sling, he contributes to Apache Sling , Apache Jackrabbit, and Apache Felix in areas such as resource resolution, OAuth/OIDC integration, and developer tooling. Since 2014 he has presented 30+ sessions at Devoxx Belgium, ApacheCon, EclipseCon, Geecon, and other events on modular Java, secure-by-default web application design, cloud-native development, and supporting large-scale open source projects.

LOCATION: Zürich
ROOM: PH Zürich, Lagerstrasse 2, 8090 Zürich, Building LAC, Room E071, Travel instructions
KEYWORDS: AI, Tools

SPEAKER: Robert Munteanu   COMPANY: Adobe

AI coding assistants are quickly becoming part of everyday development workflows, and teams are starting to invest in agent-specific tooling such as reusable skills, repository instructions, and external tool integrations. But before adopting or expanding that tooling, we should ask a basic engineering question: does it actually improve results? A higher task success rate is useful, but it is not enough on its own. Speed, cost, and reliability matter too.

In this session, I will show how to evaluate coding assistants with the same discipline we apply to other engineering decisions. We will look at how to define realistic tasks, choose meaningful metrics, and design quality gates that go beyond anecdotal "it feels better" feedback. I will also walk through the current state of evaluation approaches, what to look for when selecting one, and the trade-offs between flexibility, rigor, and effort.

The talk concludes with a hands-on demo using a public GitHub repository, showing how an evaluation can be set up, run, and interpreted in practice. Attendees will leave with a concrete framework for measuring whether coding assistant tooling delivers a net benefit in their own Java projects, and with a clearer view of when the investment is justified.

LANGUAGE: Talk: en / Slides: en

Robert Munteanu is a Senior Engineer on Adobe’s AEM Core Cloud Foundation team. An Apache Software Foundation member and PMC chair for Apache Sling, he contributes to Apache Sling , Apache Jackrabbit, and Apache Felix in areas such as resource resolution, OAuth/OIDC integration, and developer tooling. Since 2014 he has presented 30+ sessions at Devoxx Belgium, ApacheCon, EclipseCon, Geecon, and other events on modular Java, secure-by-default web application design, cloud-native development, and supporting large-scale open source projects.

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