[d0paware]

1) Vert.x (https://github.com/eclipse-vertx/vert.x) - Reactive framework (think Node.js on steroids) built on top of Netty with awesome HTTP and JDBC support. I use this to build anything that's performance sensitive or cost to serve is important.

2) Spring IoC / spring-context / spring-beans (https://docs.spring.io/spring-framework/docs/current/referen...): Spring is still pretty awesome for dependency injection. You only have to import what you need. Also a fan of Spring Boot but you need to be pretty opinionated about disabling auto-configuration or just pulling in what you need. Injecting whatever Spring library you need becomes pretty straightforward after that.

If you're going to adopt any of these technologies though, your team needs to be able to look under the covers when things go wrong or you need to do something sufficiently custom.