Chapter 1. Bootstarting Spring
This chapter covers
- How Spring Boot simplifies Spring application development
- The essential features of Spring Boot
- Setting up a Spring Boot workspace
The Spring Framework has been around for over a decade and has found a place as the de facto standard framework for developing Java applications. With such a long and storied history, some might think that Spring has settled, resting on its laurels, and is not doing anything new or exciting. Some might even say that Spring is legacy and that it’s time to look elsewhere for innovation.
Some would be wrong.
There are many exciting new things taking place in the Spring ecosystem, including work in the areas of cloud computing, big data, schema-less data persistence, reactive programming, and client-side application development.
Perhaps the most exciting, most head-turning, most game-changing new thing to come to Spring in the past year or so is Spring Boot. Spring Boot offers a new paradigm for developing Spring applications with minimal friction. With Spring Boot, you’ll be able to develop Spring applications with more agility and be able to focus on addressing your application’s functionality needs with minimal (or possibly no) thought of configuring Spring itself. In fact, one of the main things that Spring Boot does is to get Spring out of your way so you can get stuff done.