Comment by gf000

Well, spring is a whole framework that gives you a lot of stuff, but sure, complexity has to live somewhere - fundamentally so.

Without it, you either write that complexity yourself or fail to even recognize why is it necessary in the first place, e.g. failing to realize the existence of SQL injections, Cross-Site Scripting, etc. Backends have some common requirements and it is pretty rare that your problem wouldn't need these primitives, so as a beginner, I would advice.. learning the framework as well, the same way you would learn how to fly a plane before attempting it.

For other stuff, there is no requirement to use Spring - vanilla java has a bunch of tools and feel free to hack whatever you want!