I write Spring full time these days. You may have Stockholm at this point (like me), but Spring is terrible in two areas:
- when things go wrong
- onboarding newer / more junior devs
For point 1, there are so many layers of abstraction and 20 page stack traces that you could fill an entire log buffer with just one NPE...
Kidding aside, I can't tell you how many times I've wrestled with the auto-configure magic. The reality is you'll include so many "starters" in a medium use app, you won't know whose including what. A polluted Spring container is a real problem. That isn't the only problem, but it's one of the more prominent. You may say "well write cleaner code!" and I would reply that Spring is conducive to writing code that doesn't fit well with the framework, and that's mostly because you have to understand 10+ years of architecture decisions when you want to do anything beyond the basics (That's why we mostly don't reach for the "Spring" way to do things anymore, just the simplest way). All that is to say, there is a reason Spring development has been supported by Spring consultants.
For point two, It's very easy get started but it's very difficult to mature into a fully productive dev. The things juniors and mids struggle with the most is unpacking autowiring and how to resolve those issues, how to properly handle async behavior (especially with Spring fully embracing WebClient and Reactor now), and database connections.
But yeah, outside of all of that, very easy to use, sure.
- when things go wrong
- onboarding newer / more junior devs
For point 1, there are so many layers of abstraction and 20 page stack traces that you could fill an entire log buffer with just one NPE...
Kidding aside, I can't tell you how many times I've wrestled with the auto-configure magic. The reality is you'll include so many "starters" in a medium use app, you won't know whose including what. A polluted Spring container is a real problem. That isn't the only problem, but it's one of the more prominent. You may say "well write cleaner code!" and I would reply that Spring is conducive to writing code that doesn't fit well with the framework, and that's mostly because you have to understand 10+ years of architecture decisions when you want to do anything beyond the basics (That's why we mostly don't reach for the "Spring" way to do things anymore, just the simplest way). All that is to say, there is a reason Spring development has been supported by Spring consultants.
For point two, It's very easy get started but it's very difficult to mature into a fully productive dev. The things juniors and mids struggle with the most is unpacking autowiring and how to resolve those issues, how to properly handle async behavior (especially with Spring fully embracing WebClient and Reactor now), and database connections.
But yeah, outside of all of that, very easy to use, sure.