gs-spring-boot VS Apache Wicket

You're welcome. You can do this fairly easily with straight java SE, but once you've done that take look at what Spring has to offer, in particular Spring Boot. Inversion of Control and Dependency Injection are super powerful!

You can try the official documentation on https://spring.io/guides/gs/spring-boot/ There are courses as well. Also you can check out https://www.baeldung.com/spring-boot

Spring does have a broilerplate "get it up and running" project. Go to start.sprint.io , configure whichever stuff you will need, download the project, import it in your IntelliJ, read and implement https://spring.io/guides/gs/spring-boot/ , then run it.

Soring's own guides are pretty good to be honest. https://spring.io/guides/gs/spring-boot/

Not necessarily a book recommendation but I’m a strong believer in actually implementing a project to learn about the tech stack. Spring has a great tutorial: https://spring.io/guides/gs/spring-boot/

Their docs are pretty complete. Here is an example with start to finish: https://spring.io/guides/gs/spring-boot/ It says you only need 15min and some libs.

Spring has a guide.

i use java with spring boot (link), also look up "MVC web development", i use thymeleaf in the html as part of the MVC approach. (i use maven to manage the packages.)

Sort of sounds like Apache Wicket (https://wicket.apache.org/). I used it for a few projects in the mid-late 2000s. I really liked it being server side and the concept of having object-oriented HTML (code paired with HTML snippets). I haven't had a need to use it since 2014, so haven't kept up with the project.

You can use Java for Backend and Frontend. A relative new kid on the block for Frontend is Qute. The general keyword you are searching for is Java Templating Engine. Specific examples would be Thymeleaf or FreeMarker. There are some framework, which offer a lot more than templating like Vaadin or Wicket. Some are just specifications like Jakarta Faces with some of their implementations MyFaces or Mojarra.

Perhaps, a good competitor for JSF is Apache Wicket.

I have used https://wicket.apache.org/ in the past and I think it matches your needs. It's a simple mvc that focuses on the actual java code writing and uses html only on the layout of your components in your page.

Is this the Wicket you're referring to? https://wicket.apache.org/

What's the best intro you know to how it's components work, and the benefits and tradeoffs over other approaches?

You should consider Apache Wicket. It is widely used for business apps.

I think Apache Wicket takes a similar approach for Java? https://wicket.apache.org/

I like the approach, and it's good to see more projects in this space.

I believe Wicket is somewhat similar (and still actively developed).

https://wicket.apache.org/