[vJUG CONNECT] AI & Java: From Structured Prompts to Smarter Apps

🎉 We’re excited to announce our next vJUG Connect event, teaming up with the London Java Community (LJC)!

This hybrid event brings together the global vJUG audience with the vibrant London Java Community for an evening of world-class Java learning, community, and connection.

We’ll kick things off with Simon Maple exploring Spec Driven Development, showing why structured prompts are the key to scaling AI coding. Then, Holly Cummins will dive into Using LangChain4j to Make Your Java Apps Smarter, demonstrating how to harness AI frameworks to level up your Java applications.

Whether you’re tuning in from around the world on YouTube or joining us in person at Tessl HQ with the LJC, expect insightful talks, lively discussion, and of course, pizza and beer for those in London!

Huge thanks to our friends at Tessl for sponsoring this event and supporting our community.

Location:

• Virtual: https://www.youtube.com/live/8l1obGG_6jQ
• IRL: Sign up on the LJC meetup page, link coming soon

Agenda:
​6:00pm – Doors open
​6:30pm - Kick off and message from our partners
​6:45pm – Session kicks off (live stream begins on YouTube with vJUG)

• Session 1: Spec Driven Development Why your prompt chaos won’t scale with Simon Maple
• Session 2: Using LangChain4j to Make Your Java Apps Smarter with Holly Cummins

(live stream ends)
​8pm – Networking
9pm – Wrap-up

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Session 1: Spec Driven Development Why your prompt chaos won’t scale
This session introduces Spec Driven Development (SDD) for AI coding, replacing ad-hoc prompts with human-readable specifications to improve code reliability, collaboration, and adaptability. We'll show this with a real-world Spring PetClinic example to show how SDD enables scalable, testable AI development, addresses challenges like spec drift, and supports smoother iteration and teamwork beyond freestyle prompting.

Simon Maple - Head of Developer Relations
Simon Maple is the Founding Developer Advocate at Tessl, previously the Field CTO, and VP Developer Relations at Snyk, ZeroTurnaround, and IBM. He has been a Java Champion since 2014, JavaOne Rockstar speaker in 2014 and 2017, Duke’s Choice award winner, Virtual JUG founder and organiser, and London Java Community co-leader. He is an experienced speaker, having presented at most large conferences in the Java and Security spaces.

Session 2: Using LangChain4j to Make Your Java Apps Smarter
AI isn't just for coding assistants and python programmers. The real power of LLMs comes from integrating them into applications, connected to real data and real business logic.
LangChain4j is emerging as a de facto standard for LLM integration in Java.In this demo-driven talk, Holly will explore a range of cool LangChain4j capabilities, such as type safe object mapping, stateful context, agents, RAG, guard rails, and fault tolerance. (The demos will use Quarkus, but LangChain4j can be used with any framework.)

Holly Cummins, Senior Technical Staff Member, Quarkus at IBM
Holly Cummins is a Senior Principal Software Engineer on the Red Hat Quarkus team and a Java Champion. Over her career, Holly has been a full-stack javascript developer, a build architect, a client-facing consultant, a JVM performance engineer, and an innovation leader. Holly has led projects to understand climate risks, count fish, help a blind athlete run ultra-marathons in the desert solo, and invent stories (although not at all the same time). She gets worked up about sustainability, technical empathy, extreme programming, the importance of proper testing, and automating all the things. You can find her at http://hollycummins.com, or follow her on socials at @holly_cummins.

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Whether you're attending in person or joining us online, don't miss this opportunity to learn about the latest Java advancements and connect with the global Java community!

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Join the Community!
If you haven't joined the Slack community, what are you waiting for? It's the ultimate spot to throw in your questions during our live sessions and mingle with fellow Java enthusiasts from all around the world.
Simply click here to join us: https://bit.ly/vJUG-Slack