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> java needs an xml file But that was too boring, so people turned to gradle and we're back at ad-hoc scripting in a bizarre Turing-complete language. Believe

> java needs an xml file But that was too boring, so people turned to gradle and we're back at ad-hoc scripting in a bizarre Turing-complete language. Believe me, I've hated maven with a passion (and still do) but this episode taught me build systems are nothing but a zero-sum game and typical junior-grade pastime. Update: the story with Node.js is a bit different, but package.json was soon augmented by package-lock.json and yarn at about the same time Webpack and similar became kitchen sinks requiring config-generator tools such as create-react-app. The morale is, the grass is always greener on the other side I guess. Though tbh, cmake always was absolute garbage making autotools look sane in comparison. Now I hear there's legacy/unmaintained and new cmake syntax; what were people thinking?

throwaway894345 4y ago
This is a straw man. The objection was never "XML is too boring", the objection was "the XML models an actual programming language, so we're doing imperative programming but without the ergonomics and syntax of a programming language". "It's just XML/YAML/HCL! Way easier than programming in an imperative language!" is such a farce (not only among build systems but especially among infrastructure-as-code solutions). Just because it accepts XML doesn't mean your build system is meaningfully declarative.
- tannhaeuser 4y ago
  Oh, I fully agree with your argument as it applies to the old ant build tool, which is in fact a programming language using XML serialization - the author even apologized for it when he realized syntax wasn't the hard part. But a maven pom.xml is actually a component model serialization rather than a programming language in disguise - unless you're referring to embedded ant scripts in maven files which is a thing, but not common enough to warrant criticism IMO. Scripted deployment tasks in a Java context were more commonly seen in Jenkins, and only recently spill into gradle build scripts (I've always thought gradle was following Jenkins' Groovy syntax for eventual integration but that hasn't happened).

throwaway894345 4y ago

This is a straw man. The objection was never "XML is too boring", the objection was "the XML models an actual programming language, so we're doing imperative programming but without the ergonomics and syntax of a programming language". "It's just XML/YAML/HCL! Way easier than programming in an imperative language!" is such a farce (not only among build systems but especially among infrastructure-as-code solutions). Just because it accepts XML doesn't mean your build system is meaningfully declarative.

tannhaeuser 4y ago
Oh, I fully agree with your argument as it applies to the old ant build tool, which is in fact a programming language using XML serialization - the author even apologized for it when he realized syntax wasn't the hard part. But a maven pom.xml is actually a component model serialization rather than a programming language in disguise - unless you're referring to embedded ant scripts in maven files which is a thing, but not common enough to warrant criticism IMO. Scripted deployment tasks in a Java context were more commonly seen in Jenkins, and only recently spill into gradle build scripts (I've always thought gradle was following Jenkins' Groovy syntax for eventual integration but that hasn't happened).