Isn't your problem above essentially with Spring rather than the new JDK? Presumably Spring is using internal APIs that have changed in JDK11. And yes, the refl

Isn't your problem above essentially with Spring rather than the new JDK? Presumably Spring is using internal APIs that have changed in JDK11. And yes, the reflection and dynamic behaviour in Spring are not type safe (i.e. runtime failures). Spring XML is a manifestation of "Greenspun's tenth rule" - it gives people the flexibility of Lisp/Python by unsurprisingly removing static type safety - not a trade-off that many will agree with. You should tell management that your job had been made harder by the choices made by the original architects of the system (who I assume are long gone),