Are you comparing to legacy java applications? Haven't written xml in soon a decade in spring boot.
I groan every time I come across a Maven project, which AFAIK isn't quite yet "legacy."
What about dependecy management, testing, building, and all of the other non-java-code bits? Gradle only goes so far in my limited experience.
The non-Java parts of Java development are what repeatedly get me to choose Go, Ruby, Python, TypeScript/node.js, etc. The tooling is magnitudes easier to use.
Genuinely curious! Thx.
(edit: typo)