I don't code very much Java or C#. I've tried to get into Spring because I wanted to save time but it was too complicated for my patience. I also evaluated ASP.NET and it seemed significantly more convoluted.
There is a ton of documentation for both Spring and ASP.NET but both are so complicated and specific to investing in exact ways of modelling users/auth/whatnot that they are both super hard to get into as a hobbiest outsider.
I like both languages and they both have good microservice libraries and general ecosystem. I just don't think it's worth saying Spring is complex without talking about ASP.NET.
>evaluated ASP.NET and it seemed significantly more convoluted
Which one? I would be very surprised if it were asp.net core, which is their current offering. It is one of the most straightforward and clean web frameworks I've ever had to work with. Spring seems to me to be a giant bowl of spaghetti in comparison to it.
You may also be interested in taking a look at [quarkus](quarkus.io) in that case. It's a relatively new platform developed by RedHat that focuses on cloud usability, performance and developer joy, while using well-established APIs like JAX-RS, JPA or microprofile
Oh yes I've found a number of good microservices for both languages. I'm just astounded by how complex Spring and ASP. Net are. Though to be fair I also find Rails too complex.
I guess the problem is that I've just never had to use on of these at work.
So when programming in my free time in both Java and .NET it's way easier/more fun to just use microservice libraries that are easier to pick up.
Rails and Spring Boot both scratch a similar itch. Out of the gate, a brand new project spins up and can return output (JSON or HTML) with almost zero config. The developer is responsible for augmenting that project with controllers/services/models/etc. What this leads to are dark corners. This is fine as not every developer needs to understand all of those dark corners. But it also leads to blind dependence on the framework and its libraries. And when something goes wrong, they can go REALLY wrong. That said, Spring implements some great patterns out of the box. And spinning up a highly performant microservice with JWT auth, security, an okay ORM (I don't hate Hibernate like a lot of folks do) is cake!
Asp.net is very well documented. I agree that authentication is a mess and the framework slightly over-engineered, but it's still very doable to use as a hobbyist.
There is a ton of documentation for both Spring and ASP.NET but both are so complicated and specific to investing in exact ways of modelling users/auth/whatnot that they are both super hard to get into as a hobbiest outsider.
I like both languages and they both have good microservice libraries and general ecosystem. I just don't think it's worth saying Spring is complex without talking about ASP.NET.