> I actually lay most of the blame on Gradle, which became mandatory around the same time. I never thought that someone would create a build tool I dislike more

> I actually lay most of the blame on Gradle, which became mandatory around the same time. I never thought that someone would create a build tool I dislike more than Maven, but it seems they succeeded Indeed ... most people don't know Groovy and hate Gradle whenever they have to fight with the build file. What's fascinating is that I really like Groovy and know it extremely well - but even I hate Gradle. It's amazing how shiny the documentation looks for how little it explains the underlying principles of what is going on. Most people are two steps removed from any hope of understanding it (first learn Groovy, then realize that Gradle is actually a DSL layered on top of Groovy, so you still have no clue what is going on until you learn that as well ...)