DEV Community: Shubhangi

⚰️Spring Boot Postmortem#5

Shubhangi — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 13:55:56 +0000

Spring Enters the Scene (and saves humanity)

Spring Didn't Replace Servlets.

Spring looked at developers and said:

Why are you doing all this manually?

Spring introduced ideas like

-Dependency Injection
-Inversion of Control
-Bean Management
-Loose Coupling

Not because they sounded fancy.

Because large Java projects had become difficult to test, maintain, and scale. Spring aimed to reduce boilerplate, configuration complexity, and tight coupling.

And then...

Spring became huge.🫡

One framework became an ecosystem.

Need APIs? Spring MVC.

Need databases? Spring Data.

Need security? Spring Security.

Need AI? Spring AI.

Spring grew into a collection of focused projects instead of a single library.

Then Spring Boot arrived.

Spring Boot looked at Spring and said:

🗣️ bro...! why are we making people configure literally everything?

Spring Boot became that one friend who already did your homework.

-Embedded Tomcat.
-Auto-configuration.
-Starter dependencies.
-Sensible defaults.

Now developers could spend more time solving business problems instead of wiring infrastructure. That's the core promise of Spring Boot.

🚨 Common Hallucination

Did Spring Boot replace Spring?

No.

Spring Boot uses Spring.

Spring provides the foundation, Spring Boot automates much of the setup.

One picture to remember forever:

This is the bigger picture behind modern Java backend development.

⚰️Spring Boot Postmortem#4

Shubhangi — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 13:38:46 +0000

Enters the first superhero of the Script. (Read the parts before to get context)

Servlets.

Not glamorous.

Not trendy.

But absolutely necessary.

Think of a Servlet as a translator.

Browser speaks HTTP.

Java speaks Java.

Servlet says Relax. I'll translate.

Servlets running inside containers like Tomcat receive HTTP requests and invoke Java methods such as doGet() or doPost().

Problem solved?
Not really.

Servlets fixed communication.

They didn't fix developer happiness.

Soon every enterprise project looked like :

XML-> Configuration-> Boilerplate-> Configuration-> XML -> Configuration

And a lot of Pain.

Developers weren't building products. They were fighting configuration

Servlets Were the Avengers.
Until They Became the Villain. 🦹

Someone had to clean up the mess.🫟

And you know who.

if you don't , read the next article.

[Boost]

Shubhangi — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 13:14:11 +0000

Shubhangi

Jul 20

⚰️Spring Boot Postmortem#3

#java #springboot #spring

1 min read

⚰️Spring Boot Postmortem#3

Shubhangi — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 13:13:55 +0000

Java vs The Web ⚔️

Java Knows Everything.

Except Websites.

Don’t get me wrong , Java is amazing ⭐

It understands :

Classes
Objects
Inheritance
Collections
Threads.

And a lot of other things.

Ask Java to print Hello World? Done.

Ask Java to calculate Fibonacci? Done.

BUT....

Ask Java GET /products ?

Java: bro…what even is a GET?

And that’s NOT java being lazy.

Core Java simply wasn’t designed to understand web concepts like HTTP requests, URLs, headers, cookies, sessions, or REST APIs on its own.

So what if we built a website using only Java?

Prepare to suffer ☠️

You’d have to:

-Open a network port.
-Read raw bytes.
-Figure out where the HTTP headers end.
-Parse the request yourself.
-Decide which method to call.
-Create the response manually.
-Handle multiple users.
-Manage threads.

All Alone.

Imagine being hired to build an e-commerce website…and spending half your time translating internet messages instead of writing business logic.

That manual work is exactly what every Java web app would otherwise repeat.

Someone (with brains) eventually got tired of doing this.

They built something revolutionary.

Drumrolls please 🥁

They’re called Servlets.

To know more about it , checkout my next article. Go run.🏃‍➡️

⚰️Spring Boot Postmortem#2

Shubhangi — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 13:01:45 +0000

The Internet Needed a Common Language

But wait.

How does the browser even say, show me the products ?

Does it send English? Hindi? Morse code? Carrier pigeons? 🕊️
No.

The internet has a language.

It’s called HTTP.

Think of HTTP as restaurant etiquette. Imagine walking into McDonald’s.
Instead of ordering Burger, you say :

One McAloo Tikki meal.🍔
Large fries.🍟
Coke.🧋
Takeaway.📦

Everything follows a format. HTTP does exactly that.

It tells browsers: here’s how you ask nicely.

And servers: here’s how you’re supposed to answer.

HTTP defines the request format, response format, methods, headers, URLs, and status codes so both sides follow the same rulebook.

The internet has five favourite verbs.

GET : I’m just looking.
POST : I’m sending something.
PUT : Replace everything.
PATCH : Just change this one thing.
DELETE : Adios.

Congratulations.

You now know 80% of the HTTP methods you’ll use daily.

🧠 So far…

✅ Browser asks.

✅ Server answers.

✅ HTTP keeps everyone civilised.

The browser finally knows how to talk.

But wait 🫷

We still have a small problem.

Java has absolutely no idea what HTTP means.

Let's decode this in the next one. Stay tuned!

⚰️Spring Boot Postmortem#1

Shubhangi — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 12:47:21 +0000

How Java Accidentally Created a Framework Empire 👑

If Java is so powerful…why did we need Spring? and then Spring Boot?

Did Java suddenly forget how to build websites? No.

Java was suffering from success. (just kidding)

Let’s perform the postmortem.

Imagine it’s 2002.

You’re building Amazon. 🛒

A user opens amazon.com and presses Enter. Simple. Right?

Wrong.

That tiny click starts one of the longest relay races in software engineering.

Every website you’ve ever opened works like this.

The browser acts as the client asking for something, while the server processes the request and replies.

Cool.

So browsers and servers are talking.

But…what language are they even speaking?

That’s our next article. Stay tuned !