It depends on what applications you write. I write financial applications with Java but I don't use Spring and JPA/Hibernate. Spring is quite suitable to write CRUD applications.
You either have a bloated runtime or you need to include more external dependencies. It's just trade off. The trend is to have lightweight runtime in cloud era.
You either have a bloated runtime or you need to include more external dependencies. It's just trade off. The trend is to have lightweight runtime in cloud era.