Spring has been the number one framework of choice to develop enterprise applications in the Java world for more than a decade. In the relatively young and dynamic world of Java frameworks, a decade is a long time.

Enterprise applications evolve quickly. The main challenges in 2004, when the first version of the Spring Framework was initially released, were the difficulties in writing testable code and developing loosely coupled web applications. As time progressed, the challenges shifted to developing great web services—initially with Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) and, eventually, REST. And, in the last few years, enterprise application architectures evolved toward microservices. 

The Spring Framework (including Spring Projects and Spring Modules) continues to provide solutions to meet the needs of the day with a number of Spring Projects and Spring Modules, including Spring Core, Spring MVC, Spring Web Services, Spring Boot, and Spring Cloud.

How did Spring remain so popular in a dynamic world where frameworks struggle to be relevant for more than a few years?

In this section, let's take a quick look at how the Spring Framework has kept up with the changing needs of enterprise applications.