I'm also a fan. I think Java fell out of favor about a decade ago as hipsters rushed towards Node and Rails. Meanwhile the Java pros have been delivering incremental improvements to an already mature and stable system that is Spring and now with Boot not only is it a venerable battle tested solution but with the Starters it's downright joyful to use. Year after year it's seen steady progress leveraging a 30 year old ecosystem with no drama and no craziness surrounding the newer stacks.