I agree that the way I've made my statement can be ambiguous. What I meant was when using Node/Python/Go for projects of similar complexity. Maybe not millions of lines of code, but a web app with some order processing, database access and specific business logic. It feels harder in every way when using Java + Spring Boot, but my question was sincere: I'm pretty sure that this combo is a successful platform and I want to understand why.

Finally, by excessive use of annotations, I think I'm talking about ORMs. I remember checking a Hibernate-based project in the past and some methods had more lines of annotations than actual code. I'm not sure this is bad, but it kind of creates a new dimension of code for me to wonder about.