Hello and welcome to the "Spring Boot Basics" course! This is the first in a series of courses dedicated to Spring Boot — one of the most popular frameworks today. Spring Boot empowers you to create a wide range of applications, from simple web apps and complex microservices to data-driven applications, real-time systems, and enterprise-level solutions. In this course, we'll dive into the world of Spring Boot using the Kotlin programming language and the Gradle build tool with Kotlin DSL. We assume you are comfortable with Kotlin, as we won't cover Kotlin syntax in this course. Don't worry if you're not familiar with Gradle; we'll explain the key concepts along the way. Excited? Let's get started!

Before we talk about Spring Boot, let's discuss its predecessor, Spring. Spring is an open-source framework created in 2002 to simplify development. It provides a collection of libraries that address common challenges faced by developers, making our daily tasks easier. Here are a few of those libraries:

• spring-core: Provides the fundamental parts of the framework, including the IoC (Inversion of Control) container.
• spring-web: Contains logic for developing REST endpoints, handling web requests, and integrating with web technologies.
• spring-security: Addresses security concerns, including authentication and authorization for your applications.
• spring-data: Simplifies data access and manipulation across different data sources, such as relational databases and NoSQL databases.
• spring-mvc: Provides features for building web applications, including model-view-controller architecture support.
• spring-test: Allows you to write unit tests and integration tests for Spring applications.

These are just a few of the many libraries that Spring offers to make development more efficient and manageable.

Spring Boot is an extension of the Spring framework, introduced in 2014, that simplifies the development of new Spring applications. Created to streamline the setup and development process, Spring Boot allows developers to get started quickly without the need for extensive configuration. Here’s how Spring Boot achieves this:

• Auto-Configuration: Automatically configures your application based on the dependencies you have added, reducing the need for manual setup.
• Standalone Applications: Allows you to create standalone applications that can run independently without the need for an external application server.
• Embedded Servers: Includes embedded web servers like Tomcat, Jetty, or Undertow, so you don’t have to deploy your application to an external server.
• Production-Ready Features: Provides built-in support for features such as metrics, health checks, and externalized configuration, which are essential for production environments.
• Opinionated Defaults: Offers sensible defaults to reduce the amount of boilerplate code and configuration, enabling you to focus on building your application.
• Spring Boot Starters: Provides a set of pre-configured starter dependencies that simplify the process of adding functionalities like web, security, and data access to your project.

By leveraging these features, Spring Boot significantly enhances productivity, allowing developers to build robust and scalable applications with minimal effort. Spring Boot streamlines Spring development to such an extent that developing Spring applications without it seems almost unimaginable. Therefore, in this course, we'll treat Spring and Spring Boot as if they were one and the same.

Alright, it looks like Spring Boot is fun, but how can you get started? Just go to start.spring.io. This official website allows you to set up your Spring Boot project with a few button clicks. Here's how the interface looks:

The process is very simple:

1. Select the build tool: Gradle (supports Groovy and Kotlin DSLs) or Maven.
2. Select the programming language: Kotlin or Java.
3. Choose the Spring Boot version.
4. Fill in project metadata like Group, Artifact, and Name.
5. Select the dependencies needed for your project.

After that, download the zipped project to your machine, import it into your favorite IDE, and voila, you can start coding!

In CodeSignal, however, you won't have to do this, as we provide an IDE with a predefined Spring Boot project. We'll be using Gradle with the Kotlin DSL and Kotlin. You'll get familiar with it shortly.

Well done on taking your first steps into Spring Boot! Today, you learned about Spring, Spring Boot, and how to set up a new Spring Boot project using Spring Initializr. Spring Boot is a vast topic, and mastering it will take time. Don't worry if some concepts aren't clear just yet; this course is designed to be slow-paced, ensuring you understand everything thoroughly. Before moving on to the next lesson, you will have a practice session to familiarize yourself with the CodeSignal IDE and the structure of a Spring Boot project. See you there!