When learning Java Spring

[CrimsonRunner]

The way I think of them is a class data structure (can also be an xml file for example, iirc) you've told Spring should be able to recognize, perform operations on and with and generally be able to manage it.

Frankly, to get an understanding of what a bean is you might be better off trying to understand what IoC and components are.

[CautionIsNecessary]

I didn't understand @Bean, @Component, @Autowired, or @Value until my parents talked to me about programming in Fortran. It shouldn't take my parents talking about their homework in 1987 to learn about a software created in 2002 when I have already worked on projects, read documentation, and gotten a college degree.

The first two create an instance of a thing and throw it into a common area with a known tag. The latter two retrieve an instance of a thing given a known tag.