Have you worked with Spring before Spring Boot? What are the main differences?

Yes, I worked with Spring before Spring Boot appeared.

Main differences:

• Spring Framework is a powerful and flexible framework for building Java applications, but it requires a lot of manual configuration (XML or Java-based configuration).

• Spring Boot is an extension of the Spring Framework that simplifies application development through automatic configuration, embedded servers (like Tomcat), and convenient dependency starters.

Main advantages of Spring Boot:

• Minimal configuration — you can quickly launch an application with minimal setup.
• Embedded application server — no need to deploy WAR separately.
• Automatic component configuration based on dependencies.

Thus, Spring Boot significantly speeds up development and reduces boilerplate code compared to traditional Spring.