Disagree, maven to gradle is a downgrade. Yes, xml is boring, but it's still incredible simple, almost just a verbose package.json. And it's convention over configuration, if you do stuff like everyone else, it just works.

Gradle however, is a dsl in a language almost no java devs use. All gradle files are different, so copying an example from somewhere else probably won't work in your context etc.

> Gradle however, is a dsl in a language almost no java devs use

Gradle with Groovy sometimes gets kinda hard to comprehend

Gradle with Kotlin is entirely different experience, largely due to proper typing.

Is it? Where does my special css file go, what option is valid in this context, do I need babel, or this other 1000 package? It does tell you something that literally every framework will generate you a file, while you can easily write your build script by hand for even large java projects.