I haven't run the whole thing but I ran the "Downfall" location as part of my homebrew campaign and it was a highlight.
Make sure your players are cool with the idea of non-combat resolutions. Its not a combat focused campaign the way D&D typically is and usually the non-violent resolutions to quests are the more interesting outcomes.
I'm a senior at a large tech company - I push all the teams I work with to automate the review process as much as possible. At minimum, teams must have a CI hook on their pull request process that runs a remote dryrun build of the changed packages. The dryrun makes sure the packages compile, pass unit tests and meet linter rules. A failed build blocks the pull request from being merged.
I try to encourage developers to turn the outcome of every code style discussion into a lint rule that fails the dryrun build when its violated. It saves time by automating something devs were doing manually anyway (reading every line of code to look for their code style pet peeves) and it also makes the dialogue healthier - devs can talk about the team standards and whether the code meets them, instead of making subjective comments about one another's code style.
I was forced to use it because its the default web server framework at my mega-corp. I've been using it for almost 7 years now, and I think one of the reasons Spring is popular is because you can pick it up pretty easily if you've got an existing app with some examples to work in.
I think the only three core concepts you have to understand for Spring to make sense are (1) MVC architecture, (2) server-side templating and (3) dependency injection. If you have a reasonable idea of how these things work, you can muddle your way through the rest.
For beginners you're right, but once you've done that one time and understand how it works, it no longer provides value and often results in slower productivity.
I usually run The Delian Tomb from Matt Colville.
Its got all the classic tropes - meeting in a tavern, travelling through a dangerous forest, crawling ancient tomb turned into a dungeon and fighting goblins. There's also a lot of great community-supported resources out there for maps and stuff. Here's a PDF of the adventure
My first ever 5E character was an Arcane Trickster, and it was such a fantastic character to play. Being able to mage hand with a high Sleight of Hand skill provides so much utility (as long as you have a flexible DM who is willing to improvise)
I've played 7 sessions in a 13th Age campaign, and I love it so far. It has all the core familiar d20 mechanics, but throws away D&D's skill system in favor of explicit mechanics that incorporate PC backstory directly into success and failure in the game.
In 13th Age instead of skills, PCs have "Backgrounds". Backgrounds are rolled like skills, but instead of picking from a list, PCs make up their own.
For example, if your PC's backstory involves being abandoned as a child and growing up on the mean city streets, you might have the background: "Resourceful Urchin". During the session, if your party is tracking down a bad guy in the slums, you could ask your DM: "could I use my Resourceful Urchin background to tap into my contacts and find out if anyone has seen the bad guy recently?" Your DM says "give me a roll" and if you succeed, you advance in your pursuit without negative consequence.
13th Age takes a bit more good faith from both the players and the GM to be fun, but its so great for making the PCs feel special and important in the world in a way D&D doesn't support.