Tools have a very hard time understanding arbitrary gradle scripts. Since your config language is Turing-complete, you can easily subvert any kind of assistance

Tools have a very hard time understanding arbitrary gradle scripts. Since your config language is Turing-complete, you can easily subvert any kind of assistance from tools like Intellij IDEA. Parsing XML on the other hand and adding some semantic to well-defined tags or even plugins: That's much simpler and more robust. (Yes, you can do scripting inside some maven plugins, but if you do that, I'll come over and sit on your keyboard until you can convince me that there was no other way) Avoid gradle like the plague.