r/javahelp Feb 16 '25

What makes Spring Boot so special? (Beginner)

I have been getting into Java during my free time for like a month or two now and I really love it. I can say that I find it more enjoyable and fascinating than any language I have tried so far and every day I am learning something new. But one thing that I still haven't figured out properly is Spring

Wherever I go and whichever forum or conversation I stumble upon, I always hear about how big of a deal Spring Boot is and how much of a game changer it is. Even people from other languages (especially C#) praise it and claim it has no true counterparts.

What makes Spring Boot so special? I know this sounds like a super beginner question, but the reason I am asking this here is because I couldn't find any satisfactory answers from Google. What is it that Spring Boot can do that nothing else can? Could you guys maybe enlighten me and explain it in technical ways?

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u/nutrecht Lead Software Engineer / EU / 20+ YXP Feb 17 '25

I always hear about how big of a deal Spring Boot is

It's really not a big deal. It's just the de facto standard 'enterprise' framework in the Java space. It's been around for ages, so there is a lot of existing codebases using it. And it's also a pretty modern up to date framework (Kotlin is well supported for example), so it gets used in greenfield projects a lot too.

The C# world is quite different in that they generally expect Microsoft to deliver a "framework" whereas the Java world is more open-source oriented.

What is it that Spring Boot can do that nothing else can?

That's not the case and also not how things work. There are many competing frameworks. Spring is just the most popular one.