🔸 TLDR
The Jivaro peoples of the Amazon (especially the Shuar) became famous in Western accounts for tsantsa, the ritual shrinking of heads.
Java Champion Patrick Baumgartner tried a much friendlier version of the idea… on a Spring Boot app. 😄
He built myTunes: a Java radio player compiled AOT to WebAssembly with GraalVM Web Image and running entirely inside the browser.
No backend. No JVM. No hand-written JavaScript.
Then he compared 2️⃣ versions of the same app:
▪️ Spring Boot 4.1.1 + Spring Modulith 2.1.0
▪️ Plain Java, wired with just 9️⃣ constructor calls
And the shrinking began. 🗿
▪️ Wasm: ~16.1 MB → ~1.3 MB
▪️ Gzip: ~6.8 MB → ~0.53 MB
▪️ Startup: 137 ms / 22 beans → ~20 ms
▪️ Wasm size: 12.4× smaller
▪️ Startup: ~7× faster
In this tiny application, roughly 92% of the Wasm module came from framework weight.
But Patrick's point is NOT “frameworks are bad.”
Spring buys you dependency injection, discovery, configuration, lifecycle management, Modulith verification and familiar conventions.
For 9️⃣ constructors? Plain Java is easy.
For hundreds or thousands of components? The economics can change completely.
On a server, those extra megabytes are often invisible.
In a browser, every megabyte has to cross the network. 🌐
That makes WebAssembly a fascinating microscope for measuring the real price of our abstractions.
🔸 TAKEAWAYS
▪️ Abstractions have a cost, but cost ≠ bad deal.
▪️ Spring Boot really can run inside a browser tab. 🤯
▪️ AOT + Wasm expose assumptions we rarely question on the JVM.
▪️ Measure first. Argue about frameworks second.
🔸 FINAL WORD
Patrick brilliantly highlights a lesson from the Golden Hammer antipattern: just because you can use a tool doesn’t mean you should.
So on your next coding adventure: think what is the right tool for the right problem.
#Java #SpringBoot #Spring #GraalVM #WebAssembly #SpringModulith #SoftwareArchitecture #JavaChampion
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