When these containers talk about how they are so useful because they implement "Inversion of Control" I end up very puzzled. Inversion of control is a common characteristic of frameworks, so saying that these lightweight containers are special because they use inversion of control is like saying my car is special because it has wheels.

http://www.martinfowler.com/articles/injection.html#InversionOfControl

This guy think IoC is going to use is more and more place as GC. However, I will think quit a lot of time IoC is use incorrectly, somebody even try to use it everywhere and replacing constructor... - http://howardlewisship.com/blog/2004/08/dependency-injection-mirror-of-garbage.html

IMHO jetty is the first widely used program about IoC idea, even before spring - http://kasparov.skife.org/blog/2004/08/30/

Explain when IoC is overkill - http://blog.objectmentor.com/articles/2010/01/17/dependency-injection-inversion