[nullzzz]

The aforementioned are huge detractors for me to be honest. I find a no-magic, code-only solution like Javalin (and Express etc) far more intuitive.

[dukeyukey]

To be fair Spring Boot can be (and almost exclusively is) code-only nowadays. None of that XML stuff you found in the early days.

[michaelcampbell]

I actually preferred the XML config, and I hate XML. Why? It was all in one spot, not spread out among the source files. It could be "deployed" alongside the code and not have to recompile/build. This was a bigger deal back then when "config" was often outside the official "installation" procedures that required 5 layers of OK's to put a new "compiled version" of an application in a production system. Not saying that was the right way to do it, but it existed.