<https://newsletter.gradle.com/2017/kotlin-special...

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[irus]

https://newsletter.gradle.com/2017/kotlin-special

[irus]

@nfrankel Doesn't like gradle, isn't it? 🙂

[nfrankel]

😂 😂 😂 😂

[cedric]

gradle has become the JUnit 3 of the 2010s. Impossible to avoid but annoying to use

[nfrankel]

i disagree on the impossible to avoid
but i agree that’s it’s mandatory on android 😧
btw, “annoying” is an english understatement

[cedric]

@nfrankel I want to be fair, hence "annoying". Gradle has unleashed a lot of flexibility and power and I want to acknowledge that. It's just still pretty rough around the edges because of its old age and its Groovy roots, and it makes me sad we have to live with that. But the situation is certainly not as dire as when we were stuck with JUnit 3, which was truly horrible and inadequate for the job even back then.

[nfrankel]

Gradle is flawed from the start
because it provides “flexibility”
i don’t want my build tool to be flexible
i want it to be stable and opinionated - just like Maven
when you want to change something in Maven
you need to create a plugin, it’s painful
hence, you probably think twice before creating one
and fall back to the Maven way
in Gradle, you cannot do whatever you want
you code your build (but don’t test it - who creates code that is not tested?)
and whoever wants to do anything differently
for no other reason than to do it “his” way
he can just code it...
i’ve experienced it, it’s a nightmare

[cedric]

That's where I disagree; being able to write code directly in the build file whenever it's necessary is a productivity booster. Already back in the ant days, I wanted to do things like simple expressions or even basic inheritance (I want to run this task with all the default settings except this particular setting that I want to override").

[cedric]

And I create code that's not tested all the time, as does most of the industry I bet. It works just fine.

[nfrankel]

as you told, that’s where we disagree
between working alone and working in teams 🙂