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The popularity of Gradle utterly baffles me. When Gradle got popular the main competition was Maven which involves copy and pasting random pieces of XML from t

by papaf 6y ago

The popularity of Gradle utterly baffles me. When Gradle got popular the main competition was Maven which involves copy and pasting random pieces of XML from the internet, gave stack traces rather than clear error messages and didn't used to support incremental builds.

ashtonkem 6y ago
Before I continue, I would like to point out that Gradle is so bad that it’s making me say “I’d like to go back to XML please”. In any other context this would be an insane thing for me to say, but Gradle is that bad. XML & Maven has the benefit of having a schema. This means that not only do all my pom.xml files look similar, but the IDE can do meaningful autocompletion and semantic checking for me. It’s verbose and ugly, but at least it’s consistent and has good tooling. Gradle on the other hand is a Turing complete system, which just adds another layer of potential errors on top of Java compilation, which is the exact opposite of what I wanted. Now also all of my Gradle files are different and I have no idea why, and what the relative pros and cons of each style is. Could Maven be improved? Sure. I’d kill for something like Cargo for Java. But I did not want to find myself debugging by build tool’s state because I used a setter wrong (true story).
jordanpg 6y ago
> copy and pasting random pieces of XML from the internet Also, I don't see that this is a big deal when dealing with a declarative paradigm. In fact, cutting and pasting random bits of declarative code makes a lot of sense to me. You don't need to understand how it's doing what it's doing, only that it will. I have yet to discover a situation where some custom thing I needed couldn't be handled with the Exec Plugin or a custom plugin, which are easy to write. The truth is that these uber-custom things are actually pretty rare if you stick to conventions.
- ptx 6y ago
  Also, if you use the Kotlin compiler plugin, you can actually write blocks of Kotlin code in your Maven POM if you feel the need.
naruhodo 6y ago
OMFG! So much truth in these Gradle threads! I'm glad I'm not the only one.

by papaf 6y ago

ashtonkem 6y ago

Before I continue, I would like to point out that Gradle is so bad that it’s making me say “I’d like to go back to XML please”. In any other context this would be an insane thing for me to say, but Gradle is that bad. XML & Maven has the benefit of having a schema. This means that not only do all my pom.xml files look similar, but the IDE can do meaningful autocompletion and semantic checking for me. It’s verbose and ugly, but at least it’s consistent and has good tooling. Gradle on the other hand is a Turing complete system, which just adds another layer of potential errors on top of Java compilation, which is the exact opposite of what I wanted. Now also all of my Gradle files are different and I have no idea why, and what the relative pros and cons of each style is. Could Maven be improved? Sure. I’d kill for something like Cargo for Java. But I did not want to find myself debugging by build tool’s state because I used a setter wrong (true story).

jordanpg 6y ago

> copy and pasting random pieces of XML from the internet Also, I don't see that this is a big deal when dealing with a declarative paradigm. In fact, cutting and pasting random bits of declarative code makes a lot of sense to me. You don't need to understand how it's doing what it's doing, only that it will. I have yet to discover a situation where some custom thing I needed couldn't be handled with the Exec Plugin or a custom plugin, which are easy to write. The truth is that these uber-custom things are actually pretty rare if you stick to conventions.

ptx 6y ago
Also, if you use the Kotlin compiler plugin, you can actually write blocks of Kotlin code in your Maven POM if you feel the need.

naruhodo 6y ago

OMFG! So much truth in these Gradle threads! I'm glad I'm not the only one.