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by root_axis 1546 days ago
Nah. Gradle has its advantages but it's way more complex than building a node project. The Gradle DSL is utterly incomprehensible to anyone that isn't a seasoned Java dev. Honestly, I struggle to think of a language with a more complex build system than Gradle, besides building cpp apps.
5 comments

Seasoned Java/Kotlin dev:

Nah, Gradle is a fucking mess no matter what. If you don't absolutely understand the gradle life cycle, how to avoid task configuration, keeping everything lazy, avoid cross configuration, understand that buildSrc is shit, gradle will be hell.

Agreed. Maven is boring, but for most stuff it just works. Hard to customize, but before doing that, ask yourself why you're doing something different than millions of other projects. Go with the defaults and things will work.

Gradle feels to me like trying to set up a webpack project. Loads of magic configuration no one dares to touch after it happens to somewhat work correctly.

I dunno, I understand building cpp apps much better than building a Java one. And I have basically zero experience with both.
SBT is in another tier of incomprehensible stupidity
Nothing is a bigger time killer than sbt and scalac!
I’m not a big fan of kotlin, but gradle does have a kotlin dsl as well which is in my opinion much more readable and explicit.
you can write gradle in kotlin script, the same language as your code if it's kotlin.