I think the declarative model is why I prefer Maven over any other build system I've worked with, yeah XML is a little noisy but if it's really that big of a de

I think the declarative model is why I prefer Maven over any other build system I've worked with, yeah XML is a little noisy but if it's really that big of a deal there's the polyglot plugin. Maven POM's are pretty easy to figure out once you've worked with them for a while, there's a learning curve when you start adding plugins and have to get at least a basic understanding of build phases - but a large chunk of projects need nothing more than the default plugin bindings, they just add their dependencies and go off to the races.