Around that same timeframe, I tried using JHipster, which sort of attempts to do for Java everything that a Rails app stack does for Ruby. It took 45 minutes for my top-of-the-line Dell laptop/workstation to bootstrap it, and it was... unapproachable.
But don’t get me wrong, I see where you are coming from, I’m just saying that your experience may not have been up-to-date even then, let alone now. In practice, with spring boot, quarkus and the like developing a backend app is plenty productive in java.
I've used Spring Boot. We'll have to "agree to disagree" that it's "productive."
All these things that people are stacking on top of Java are just trying to implement concepts and features that Rails has had for 15 years, and they're still nowhere near as "productive."
Okay, come on! That is fking Struts, it is hardly a fair comparison. Though otherwise I agree that Rails is a great choice for almost every CRUD app, like we really should stop overstressing it. Just use whatever one we are comfortable with and has enough internal knowledge on and with modern computers it will be plenty fast enough.