The CDI spec statement has an implied "according to the class accessibility requirements of the module architecture of the Java EE specification". Even if the classloading could be configured in an AS to do some special trick, CDI has the visibility rules of a standard EE app (EAR/WAR/JAR). 3rd party tools as JRebel are handy for doing front-end work that don't require heavy backing bean/entity reloads.