I mean, define "need" :)

The answer is no, obviously I could use Jetty or Netty or Vert.x and have done all of those plenty of times; of course any of those would require pulling in a third party dependency.

And it's not like the stuff I write performs significantly better; usually I get roughly the same speed as Vert.x when I write it.

I just like having and building my own framework for this stuff. I have opinions on how things should be done, and I am decidedly not a luddite with this stuff. I abuse pretty much every Java 21 feature, and if I control every single aspect of the HTTP server then I'm able to use every single new feature that I want.