Not really. "I did Java in a serious project without frameworks once" is not a counter to: Java needs frameworks to be generally useful.

I am not trying to convince anyone, I'm stating the case that Java and Java programmers need frameworks in a way that more modern programmming languages don't. And that this is why it looks the way it does. My theory thus explains reality.

Do you have a counter to my claim? As in: do you have many examples of companies now that use Java without having gone with Spring Boot (or basically invented it themselves?)

I did Java for a mindnumbing decade, for god's sake. Then I stayed around the JVM for another decade writing in Scala. But! This is not an argument from authority here, I'm merely trying to add some context here lest you think that I am a .NET warrior or simply hate Java from a C++ distance. I am not.