Spring Boot is actually a VERY easy to use framework. So much so that Netflix shifted out of writing their own libraries to using Spring boot.
For example, the code below is a complete Spring Boot application with all of the default configuration in place. It will take just a couple of minutes to have this running and it provides quite a lot of features under the hood - which you don't need to worry about.
@SpringBootApplication
@RestController
public class DemoApplication {
@GetMapping("/helloworld")
public String hello() {
return "Hello World!";
}
}
I write Spring full time these days. You may have Stockholm at this point (like me), but Spring is terrible in two areas:
- when things go wrong
- onboarding newer / more junior devs
For point 1, there are so many layers of abstraction and 20 page stack traces that you could fill an entire log buffer with just one NPE...
Kidding aside, I can't tell you how many times I've wrestled with the auto-configure magic. The reality is you'll include so many "starters" in a medium use app, you won't know whose including what. A polluted Spring container is a real problem. That isn't the only problem, but it's one of the more prominent. You may say "well write cleaner code!" and I would reply that Spring is conducive to writing code that doesn't fit well with the framework, and that's mostly because you have to understand 10+ years of architecture decisions when you want to do anything beyond the basics (That's why we mostly don't reach for the "Spring" way to do things anymore, just the simplest way). All that is to say, there is a reason Spring development has been supported by Spring consultants.
For point two, It's very easy get started but it's very difficult to mature into a fully productive dev. The things juniors and mids struggle with the most is unpacking autowiring and how to resolve those issues, how to properly handle async behavior (especially with Spring fully embracing WebClient and Reactor now), and database connections.
But yeah, outside of all of that, very easy to use, sure.
> Kidding aside, I can't tell you how many times I've wrestled with the auto-configure magic.
Because everything in Go is explicit you can actually follow a short series of function calls when debugging instead of staring at a 50-function stack trace with a bunch of obscure Aspect4J magic while you feverishly search the Spring JavaDocs for whatever specific error message you're getting.
Go is a dumb language and I like it. Everything's obvious and you can't get too cute. Now that there are generics the only thing that I'm really jonesing for is a decent collections framework in the standard library... generic map, filter, fold, etc. on slices would be a real boon to productivity IMHO.
I'm a competent dev in a dozen languages including Java, I am not a professional Java developer. I've had several instances where I've had to work on a project using Spring and every time it was a freaking nightmare. Not because I am not capable, not because it didn't work, because Spring took everything and shoved it behind 15 layers of abstraction and told me to figure out the magic incantations to get it to do what I wanted. When I tried to figure out how Spring actually worked it was like trying to figure out a whole new language.
My contention is Spring is great for those who have been initiated into it's ways and like to be the members of the Martian priesthood that sing canticles to the Omnissiah, but for those who want to understand what is going on and why Spring is anathema.
is there a go-to third-party documentation for spring (eg a book) you would recommend? I find official docs difficult to navigate. (which are either very narrow tutorial or in reference format, with important details omitted).
It's usually search "baeldung spring <whatever I am trying to figure out>" and I get a nice article telling me how to do it but also explaining it as well so I can have the knowledge in the future.
I think the main author Eugen (there are many now) has a nice book.
> For example, the code below is a complete Spring Boot application with all of the default configuration in place.
Uh no, you forget the part where you have to add a bunch of stuff to your build system (maven or gradle, usually), so it actually knows what to do with this.
You can't just compile that class with java -c, run it, and have a running application the way you could do it with lighter-weight frameworks.
Yes, you have to learn how to build a minimal pom.xml to make this compile and run. IntelliJ will do this for you with its Spring Boot project template. After that, it really is this easy.
I consider the boilerplate needed to build a main.go file that starts a gRPC listener to be harder.
Writing a single get endpoint that returns string is easy in almost any language/framework today, you didn't really show anything with it. The real pain starts when you have to add database connection, migrations, auth, security and all that.
For example, the code below is a complete Spring Boot application with all of the default configuration in place. It will take just a couple of minutes to have this running and it provides quite a lot of features under the hood - which you don't need to worry about.
@SpringBootApplication @RestController public class DemoApplication {
@GetMapping("/helloworld") public String hello() { return "Hello World!"; } }