Thanks for setting this up! I've really enjoyed watching your work on Rife2 and on bld in particular.

Hi folks!

I'm Justin or J.R. and lifelong tinkerer. I like making all sorts of things, maybe software the most, but also art, music, woodworking, textiles and fabrics, toys, games...

I was working at Amazon for 9 years until the company started getting weird in 2023 with policy changes and mandates and stuff. Currently I'm working on contract at Okta and making Java and Rust SDKs for OpenFGA. Not sure what I'll be doing long-term quite yet

You can check out my projects at https://so.dang.cool

a lot of skepticism and preconceptions

What kind are you facing?

For my two cents, I'd say Android is probably a lost cause. For better or for worse, Android is going to be locked in to Gradle for a very long time.

I think bld's other advantage is that it fits the bill for a simple and stable tool like ant before it.

Gradle fits the bill for a very complex build tool, and has costs in stability since all the features necessitate refinement over time and that turns into churn/toil. That's not bad, some problems are legitimately complex and they benefit from a complex tool -- I also don't think that's a majority of projects at all.

Maven is less complex and more stable (and has a larger user base according to some surveys I've seen from JetBrains and JRebel), but Maven 4 is coming out and who knows what to expect as people try to upgrade all their maven plugins. I actually think it might put people in the mood to try something different

So... it's not really an idea, but a thought that there's a storm-a-brewing, and it might position bld really well for people that want something a little more simple and stable. (But not ant)

I like it!