I agree with you about both magic and reactivity (meaning, IIUC, asynchronous rather than blocking APIs). Helidon Nima looks interesting.
But what I'd really like in Java is a non-magic, non-reactive server-side web framework that's designed to be used for full-stack, server-side web applications, including things like strongly-typed HTML templates, form validation and rendering, cookie-based authentication, and CSRF protection. Something we can use to develop a complete server-side web application, the kind that everyone used to write before the division into back-end API and front-end SPA became popular. Helidon Nima might be a good starting point for such a framework. Another starting point worth looking at is Javalin [1].
This is essentially the Java Servlet specification with JSPs (or if you don't like those, just bolt on Thymeleaf or one of the older templating languages).
Nearly all of these newer frameworks like Spring, Helidon, Quarkus, etc. just reuse the internal Sevrlet spec themselves. Otherwise, they're reinventing a TON of code that would be insane to do in order to deal with the general HTTP request / response cycle.
But what I'd really like in Java is a non-magic, non-reactive server-side web framework that's designed to be used for full-stack, server-side web applications, including things like strongly-typed HTML templates, form validation and rendering, cookie-based authentication, and CSRF protection. Something we can use to develop a complete server-side web application, the kind that everyone used to write before the division into back-end API and front-end SPA became popular. Helidon Nima might be a good starting point for such a framework. Another starting point worth looking at is Javalin [1].
[1]: https://javalin.io/