This is not a post on Maven-bashing. This is just a post on how Maven keeps me humble. If I ever find myself becoming arrogant or think myself a gifted developer, browsing a "simple" pom.xml file quickly drives those notions of grandeur away.
I just can't muster up the motivation to delve more into maven internals. Sometimes I wake up and say, "Today is the day, I will conquer Maven!" I'll jump on the web and browse through Maven's documentation, but then somewhere around the word archetype, I'll either fall asleep or get distracted.
I've used Maven in a work project for about a year now. Of course, I didn't actually write the pom file. Like most people I inherited it. I browse it occasionally, but then somewhere around "plugins," my head explodes and I start drooling.
Is it just me, but I found my Ant build.xml file a lot easier to at least comprehend. Don't get me wrong - I don't have the knowledge to actually create a build file from scratch. I always started with one that I had done previously and then modified it. Probably the first one I did was just ripped from some online example, which begs the question if somewhere floating out on the Internet is the Mitochondrial Eve of build.xml files...?
I'm not saying that Ant is superior to Maven. I definitely think the two projects are related. Obviously, they are trying to accomplish two different goals...or should I say targets? Heh, heh. Maven just does so much that I get overwhelmed in the details.
Once again, I'm not saying that Maven is evil - I don't have the knowledge to make that assessment. I'm just saying that for me personally, Maven has quite a steep learning curve! If Ant is the Matterhorn, then Maven is Mount Everest. That being said, I'll feel a lot better about my accomplishment after conquering Maven than conquering Ant! :-)
[ DISCLAIMER: This post was made in good fun. The author accepts no blame for possible discussions involving Ant, Maven, or rabid monkeys. ]
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