In my experience, I've been able to completely avoid the framework, rather than building my own. I end up with pretty much the same controller and db access cod

In my experience, I've been able to completely avoid the framework, rather than building my own. I end up with pretty much the same controller and db access code, absolutely no implicit logic, a "main" entry point (in my case typically in the form of a @ServletContextListener class), and maybe 100-150 lines of boilerplate - i.e. the stuff that is usually implicit, such as reading config files, connecting to a database, etc.