For me the main difference between Maven and Gradle is the way I read them. Maven is declarative. Yes, it has some boilerplate, it may not look nice (I'm not a

For me the main difference between Maven and Gradle is the way I read them. Maven is declarative. Yes, it has some boilerplate, it may not look nice (I'm not a big fan of XML), but the main advantage for me is that I can read it easily and understand what it does. Because it just declares tasks. Similar to any other XML file or JSON or .properties. You just read it. Reading Gradle, on the other hand, is more like reading a program. You can't just read it, you have to interpret it, you need to put effort in order to understand what this program does. Yes, Gradle may be more flexible and less boilerplate, but personally I don't want to have another program (in another language) to just build my project.