On Oct 14, 2010, at 9:11 AM, Wayne Fay wrote: > As much fun as all this commentary is, unless Ken comes back and posts > a reply, I feel like we're simply the victims of a drive-by > trolling... > > As such, I recommend letting this thread die, at least until Ken comes > back and adds something to the discussion... Ken???
Sure, happy to. I won't be quite as angry in this post as in the last one :-), but I still have a lot of complaints against the Maven way of doing things. I won't hit them all, here are a few random thoughts: 1) Maven is declarative vs. procedural. This is great, but Prolog has been that way for decades. Why build such a complex syntax when a much simpler one already existed. 2) Relates to 1). I still think this is important. AFAIK, XML was NEVER intended to be a syntax for direct editing by the user. It is needlessly verbose and redundant, and seriously obscures the actual intent of the code. As the simplest possible example, what is the point in writing <someGenericOption>false</someGenericOption> when what is really meant is the (IMHO) much easier to read someGenericOption = false. 3) Yes, I'm aware there is something called polyglot maven. (Haven't looked at it yet, as I don't want to add yet another layer of complexity to what I'm doing.) Doesn't the simple existence of this prove my point? There were never polyglot makefiles--in spite of all of their (numerous) problems, the syntax of makefiles was simple enough there was never a demand for them. 4) Maybe I'm missing something, but maven seems to be all about predefined maven tasks. (Not sure I'm using the right terminology). If there's something simple I can do from the command line, maven doesn't provide an obvious way for me to do it. 5) Maven is just too complex. The comment I've seen is, "If users would just read a book...", but what if I don't have the time to read an entire book simply to figure out how to push my docs to github? With command-line access, I wouldn't need to do so. And if the project got so big that an ad hoc solution didn't suffice, _then_ I could come back and read the book. So those are just a few random thoughts. Make of them what you will. Thanks, Ken > > Wayne > > On Wed, Oct 13, 2010 at 5:13 PM, Rick Mangi <[email protected]> wrote: >> Flexible and elegant aren't necessarily the same thing... Any language that >> prides itself on its ability to be obfuscated can't be elegant ;-) >> >> That said, I do love it. >> >> As far as Maven goes, the elegance of maven is that it does 90% of what you >> need it to do with very little or no effort and the other 10% can be done >> without much hassle. >> >> >> On 10/13/10 10:48 AM, "Kathryn Huxtable" <[email protected]> >> wrote: >> >>> It does. The rest of the language is rather ugly, though. -K >>> >>> On Oct 13, 2010, at 9:07 AM, Rick Mangi wrote: >>> >>>> I just enjoyed the bit about perl having elegant and concise data >>>> structures >>>> :-) >>>> >>>> >> >> >> --------------------------------------------------------------------- >> To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] >> For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected] >> >> > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] > For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected] > --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected]
