Spring is reasonably easy to learn. The hard part is knowing where beans are defined, because Spring doesn't make that easy at all. Anyone and anything can define new beans in any library you pull.
I still don't see why AI would be mandatory. It's helpful, yes, but not mandatory.
is that why navigating a Spring codebase is so confusing? I'm jumping through implementations and definitions and whatever without ever reaching the actual business logic most of the time
I've had mostly problem-free experiences with intellij (ultimate-only feature I think). One click finds declarations both in business code and buried deep in libraries.
Following the code via IDE is indeed easy in javaland - but if you didn't have a breadcrumb yet... Spring boot you didn't architect yourself is indeed annoying to navigate.
Everything can be an entry point and it's often non-obvious how things are structured.
More opinionated frameworks which enforce routes and consumers to be centrally managed are generally easier to figure out from the filesystem.
But if you've got an IDE like intellij you get the entry point tool which lists all endpoints. Consumers are more annoying...