This is why something like golang is appealing. Simple simple and more simple.
To that end, Go doesn't work for me. I use a fairly straightforward stack atop the JVM because I can hold the whole thing in my head (nothing in either Dropwizard or Play is deep magic) and have the expressiveness in Scala to be clear with my code.
I noted the simplicity of the stack mostly to forestall the usual tired complaints about complexity, nothing more. What you call "academic", I call "building at scale."