> Since standard JDK could not even compile a project without ant/gradle/maven etc. I'm sorry, but I think you have to defend that statement. Certainly, gradl

> Since standard JDK could not even compile a project without ant/gradle/maven etc. I'm sorry, but I think you have to defend that statement. Certainly, gradle and maven do a LOT to make it easier to BUILD java projects, but compile? These tools do more to apply some common-sense patterns to project source and dependency management, so that you're only specifying the things you really need to, but, like most compilers, javac just needs to know where the compile-time dependencies are and where the source files are. The SDK is quite able to compile without a build tool.