Well... Java developer here, 20+ years exp... yada yada yada.. I haven't deployed a war file in over a decade. No you do not NEED a specific kind of server, just like any programming language there are LOADs of options for deployment. Nowadays we have an NGINX + Docker container. Image just contains an executable JAR. Without docker it is not much different, you just have a Spring boot executable JAR. But even if you loathe Spring, you can build an executable JAR using a build in webserver (Tomcat, Jetty, what ever). For ruby, PHP and Python my guess is Docker is the solution as well. And if you are building applications daily with it you know the best ways of deployment. I think we should all stop bashing ANY programming language; they all have their key selling points. There is always someone willing to stand up against the bashing of their programming language their are working with. I do not program in Java exclusively; I use BASH, Groovy, Scala, TypeScript, JavaScript, as well. I get angry at Node sometimes at well but then I remember that I do not use it nearly as much as I do Java...and go to stackoverflow...

Just my 2 cents