I think this is why most criticism of Java sounds weird to me. I've used Java since 1.3-ish and I've never used a web framework or an annotation and I think I've used a factory once (I think there's one in Swing and I recall thinking it was a stupid design choice).
"Coupling by annotation" culture (which diminishes many of the benefits of using a typed language, as it pushes coupling to runtime and by means of reflection) IS inherent to SpringBoot. Hence my distaste for it.
