I think you're over simplifying the gradle solution though. I know when I did java in school, it was not easy. There was a fair bit of configuration. Getting gl

I think you're over simplifying the gradle solution though. I know when I did java in school, it was not easy. There was a fair bit of configuration. Getting glassfish or tomcat to work with eclipse was a challenge. Gradle has definitely helped this a lot, but you still need to know how to configure the gradle script if you need to change something. You're right in that JS tools do need to get stronger, and over even the last 2-3 years they have. I haven't had mine "constantly breaking", generally once you build a new application and set it up with your standard dependencies. Like an ORM, what ever server middleware, test frameworks, utility libraries, etc. It tends to be pretty stable, unless you try to upgrade something years down the road.