[sehrope]

The verbosity of the XML pom is the problem. Alternative syntax using the same coordinate system are great and much easier on the eyes. The real value in maven (I think) is having that clean dependency chain and it works great. XML is what sucks (especially doing it by hand).

[cgag]

Yeah, pom files are disgusting, but leiningen (the clojure build tool) is built on top of maven and it's wonderful.

    [enlive "1.1.1"]

instead of

    <dependency>
      <groupId>enlive</groupId>
      <artifactId>enlive</artifactId>
      <version>1.1.1</version>
    </dependency>