[throwaway1492]

This, it’s really exhausting to read this never ending wheel reinvention. Sure any one can use simpler non-spring frameworks, and other “non standard” frameworks and libraries for 1/10 or 1/100 of the functionality, and get 10-100x the bugs and much less or zero support. But we need netty! And then when you add thread pools, jdbc, logging, etc? Yep you’ve reimplemented spring. Just use spring, spend the time to learn it and reap the rewards.

[wtetzner]

As someone who dealt with a ton of Spring in the recent past, I completely disagree.

First of all, thread pools are part of the standard library. Spring adds little to no value on top of it.

Second, reinventing some of that stuff is absolutely worthwhile, because Spring's library design/implementation is not very good.

Finally, when I had the opportunity to start a new Java project, I opted to not use Spring. I finally had a server that started up fast, took less code than a Spring project, was easily navigable in an IDE, and whose code was generally easier to follow. It was also easier to write tests for.

One thing I learned is that people seem to underestimate just how thin Spring's abstractions are over stuff in the library, servlets, etc. Most of what Spring does is wrap things in a bean interface so they can be used with DI (which is something I’ve never found any value in).

[geodel]

Well you are missing one of the great feature of Spring framework: Converting compile time errors in to runtime exceptions.

Jokes apart you are absolutely right about non-spring based services. I did same using plain Java + embedded tomcat for some services. No cargo-cult like endless decorative packages and classes. Exactly same result as you observed. Less code, fast to start and vastly improved error management.

[specialist]

> Converting compile time errors in to runtime exceptions.

Heh. Stealing this. Short, sharp, undeniable.

I usually say something snarky like "Spring is an exception obfuscation framework" or "...flow of control obfuscation framework".

[geodel]

> Heh. Stealing this...

Yeah, please popularize it. In my case I am unable to make management see reason. If more devs become vocal about it make it a trend, it will be a good thing to happen.

[RedShift1]

Same here. I've gotten rid of all that stuff, it's just layers and layers of indirection that contribute nothing.

One rule that has also helped me a lot to keep my code clean and make it easier to debug is to fail as much as possible in the constructor. So when you call new MyThing(), you will either get a usable object or it'll throw an exception. Further method calls are expected to work. Of course this is not doable for everything, but it sure helps keeping the methods clean and not have them throw various exceptions.

[jicea]

Could you share your Spring/Spring Boot alternatives? Are they Java based? I'm doing backend stuff with Spring Boot and I would like to test alternatives. Spring boot is not that difficult to work with, but I would like to test a "simpler" solution.

[ludovicianul]

I would recommend Quakus, Microprofile, Micronaut.,

[mmcdermott]

I've had similar experiences. A few years ago, I wrote a small service in plain Java, no frameworks as part of a quick change to improve performance. It worked and we all moved on. Later it was converted to Spring Boot and it slowed way down.

[xxs]

> But we need netty! And then when you add thread pools, jdbc, logging, et

java.util.concurrent has threadpools and pretty damn decent at that; jdbc is a part of very standard jdk, logging is part of java.util.logging. Why do you need netty (which is not a part of spring either way)?

In over 23y of working with Java, I have never needed spring.