Java annotations are terrible to reason about. Once you get a hang of them, then it's somewhat easier. That being said, Spring takes these annotations to the next level of complexity. Spring boot just makes this more difficult to reason about with added annotations. Anyone who states that Spring annotations are just 'abstractions' and that's how software is built is welcome for a healthy argument.

There are much better web development alternatives such as Javalin.

Compare this

import io.javalin.Javalin;

public class HelloWorld { public static void main(String[] args) { Javalin app = Javalin.create().start(7070); app.get("/", ctx -> ctx.result("Hello World")); } }

to

@SpringBootApplication @RestController public class DemoApplication {

public static void main(String[] args) { SpringApplication.run(DemoApplication.class, args); }

@GetMapping("/hello") public String hello(@RequestParam(value = "name", defaultValue = "World") String name) { return String.format("Hello %s!", name); } }

However, Spring cloud, has all the necessary distributed features built in. While I haven't used these, not having to write code for these is a god send. Load balancer - Check Service mesh - Check Circuit breaker - Check

Heck, they have even included all Netflix OSS components. So this alone is worth the pain of living with annotations.

https://spring.io/projects/spring-cloud