Java build tooling could be so much better (Seattle Java User Group) [video]

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4 pointslihaoyi3 comments

It's been crazy how far Java (the language) has come in the past half-decade, while it seems like the tooling around the language has not improved at all.

Sure most developers have progressed from Maven to Gradle, but not having something like `npm` or `poetry/pip` certainly puts a damper on the developer experience for the language.

Even C# and the .NET ecosystem attempt to solve this with NuGet, I would say their experience is not as excellent as other languages but still its a valiant effort.

Are you suggesting to make a uv/ruff/ty but for Java?

Not exactly. My aspiration would be to make a package manager that has a CLI for Java.

Additional tooling that matches the functionality of uv/ruff/ty would be nice, as it would allow you to develop Java on not just an IDE (IntelliJ) but in something like nvim (it isn't impossible, just not as good).

Decoupling this is obviously not in JetBrains interest, and it seems like there isn't much will in the Java community to break away from the IDE-centric development.

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