Comments on: The Joy and Sorrow that is Maven http://jbrugge.com/blog/2008/02/19/the-joy-and-sorrow-that-is-maven/ this and that and some of those Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:31:24 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.0.4 by: Michael O'Keeffe http://jbrugge.com/blog/2008/02/19/the-joy-and-sorrow-that-is-maven/#comment-23851 Fri, 09 May 2008 04:57:01 +0000 http://jbrugge.com/blog/2008/02/19/the-joy-and-sorrow-that-is-maven/#comment-23851 John, Great post. I've been a knowledgeable user (I won't say fan, that's too strong of a word I think for the relationship) of ant, and have used make of course, but there's always room for improvement shall we say? One day, I spent a few hours reviewing the various tools out there, and decided against maven basically because of the "love it/hate it". The poor documentation is also a showstopper. The wrestling example is great - I'm an ex wrestler (high school) so the imagery of being outmaneuvered by your own build system is classic. I agree, with ant, with cvs, the perl quote "timtwitty" fits well. There are many ways to evaluate the quality of an open-source (or even proprietary) tool before taking the plunge, and these are some of the criteria I use. A few other hilarious, but very apt quotes I found from the links you provided. Perhaps someone should collect these and create some sort of book, or online version, of software humor, along the lines of a book I recall in college, of collected graffiti, or American slang, etc: http://fishbowl.pastiche.org/2007/12/20/maven_broken_by_design "We have a joke around the office, when a new hire is setting up their development environment for the first time. “Now we go to lunch while Maven downloads the Internet.”" As an aside, I'm pleased to see some projects like vim, iText, and log4j, provide very solid documentation as paid for only, what a great way to support an awesome tool. It still meets my requirement of "good documentation", but you need to pay for it. John,

Great post. I’ve been a knowledgeable user (I won’t say fan, that’s too strong of a word I think for the relationship) of ant, and have used make of course, but there’s always room for improvement shall we say? One day, I spent a few hours reviewing the various tools out there, and decided against maven basically because of the “love it/hate it”. The poor documentation is also a showstopper.

The wrestling example is great - I’m an ex wrestler (high school) so the imagery of being outmaneuvered by your own build system is classic. I agree, with ant, with cvs, the perl quote “timtwitty” fits well. There are many ways to evaluate the quality of an open-source (or even proprietary) tool before taking the plunge, and these are some of the criteria I use.

A few other hilarious, but very apt quotes I found from the links you provided. Perhaps someone should collect these and create some sort of book, or online version, of software humor, along the lines of a book I recall in college, of collected graffiti, or American slang, etc:

http://fishbowl.pastiche.org/2007/12/20/maven_broken_by_design

“We have a joke around the office, when a new hire is setting up their development environment for the first time. “Now we go to lunch while Maven downloads the Internet.””

As an aside, I’m pleased to see some projects like vim, iText, and log4j, provide very solid documentation as paid for only, what a great way to support an awesome tool. It still meets my requirement of “good documentation”, but you need to pay for it.

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