This seems to be very similar to Gradle vs Buck (or Bazel). Generally speaking the main tool is slow, or otherwise suboptimal but does a lot. A different tool

This seems to be very similar to Gradle vs Buck (or Bazel). Generally speaking the main tool is slow, or otherwise suboptimal but does a lot. A different tool is built with an emphasis on speed. Eventually, the main stream tools picks up the speed features of the other tool and then "wins" because it does more. (Side note: I have no idea when Gradle came out in comparison to Buck/Bazel) For context, Gradle in the 4.0 version is starting to really support build cache support. Edit: this comment is a reaction to all the other comments I see here about yarn vs npm.