Chapter 2. Developing your first Spring Boot application

When’s the last time you went to a supermarket or major retail store and actually had to push the door open? Most large stores have automatic doors that sense your presence and open for you. Any door will enable you to enter a building, but automatic doors don’t require that you push or pull them open.

Similarly, many public facilities have restrooms with automatic water faucets and towel dispensers. Although not quite as prevalent as automatic supermarket doors, these devices don’t ask much of you and instead are happy to dispense water and towels.

And I honestly don’t remember the last time I even saw an ice tray, much less filled it with water or cracked it to get ice for a glass of water. My refrigerator/freezer somehow magically always has ice for me and is at the ready to fill a glass for me.

I bet you can think of countless ways that modern life is automated with devices that work for you, not the other way around. With all of this automation everywhere, you’d think that we’d see more of it in our development tasks. Strangely, that hasn’t been so.

2.1. Putting Spring Boot to work

2.2. Using starter dependencies

2.3. Using automatic configuration

2.4. Summary