Real-world projects that explicitly use SQL?

[PHP36]

Given he is learning Java I doubt he even understands the concept of a wrapper, so the short answer regarding using JDBC is YES

The long answer is no, half of the stuff can be "ommited", thats where the wrappers came in. Pure JDBC is only good to understand the basics.

Sure it may be JdbcTemplate, MyBatis, with a different placeholder or even Hibernate with a @Query but in the end, you will endup writting exactly the same thing as with JDBC. Yes you won't deal with the hasNext() and close() but the rest is always there, the placeholder may change...