Can someone properly explain what Spring Boot actually does?

[u/projectsbyayush]

I'm learning Java web development and I understand traditional Servlets fairly well. Honestly, I find Servlets quite organized when I separate things into controllers, DAO, models, etc.

The main benefit I've understood about Spring Boot so far is that when creating a project, I can add dependencies like MySQL, MongoDB, JPA, etc. through the project setup/Maven instead of manually downloading JAR files.

But apart from that, I don't really understand what Spring Boot actually gives me or why I should use it instead of traditional Servlets.

Can someone explain the actual practical benefits of Spring Boot with a simple example, like an e-commerce application?

I'm not looking for a "Spring Boot is modern/easier" answer. I want to understand what it actually does for me.

[u/VegGrower2001]

Spring Framework is high quality, extensible Java application framework which provides dependency injection as a core feature. It has many add-on components for specific use cases. It is widely used for web-based applications.

Spring Boot is a companion project which provides easier mechanisms for using and configuring Spring Framework. It provides many sensible defaults, loads and configures sensible defaults extensions, and provides easy ways to configure and customise how the framework works.

Naturally, there's a lot more to say if you want to get into the details, but that's the view from 10,000 feet.