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Comment by pkolaczk | Hacker News Reader

I've been working on Java-based systems for about 20 years now, and I fully relate to that. Same experience.

This is so annoying that I prefer to use Rust over Java even in areas where things like better performance or better type system don't matter. But being able to start a fresh project with one `cargo init` and a few `cargo add` invocations to add any dependencies... well, this is priceless.

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Interesting that you ended up going all the way to Rust land instead of just using one of the multiple tools that have been created to help with this, like:

* Spring Boot (it has a UI to create projects where you pick Java version, DB, build tool, some libs etc): https://spring.io/guides/gs/spring-boot

* JHipster - the nuclear option, pick what you want a la carte: https://www.jhipster.tech/

* JBang - a cute CLI for this: https://www.jbang.dev/

* Maven Archetypes - the old fashioned way (existed before "create-app" kind of tools appeared): https://maven.apache.org/guides/introduction/introduction-to...

And most IDEs also have "new project" wizzards.

Are you aware of Maven Archetypes[1]? I believe they were the "cookiecutter" before cookiecutter existed, although I am 10000000% on-board that their discovery story is total garbage :-(

1: https://maven.apache.org/archetype/index.html and https://maven.apache.org/archetype/maven-archetype-plugin/us...

But I don’t want to copy a full project with prepopulated list of dependencies chosen by someone else. I want to start small and add dependencies I need.

It’s like LEGO vs Playmobil. I want LEGO. ;)

How does that differ from `gradle init`?

Init and then what? The story of discovering and adding dependencies is still much worse. Nothing like cargo add/remove or crates.io where I can quickly search dependencies with their descriptions with standardized links to repos and documentation. Actually even Python is nicer in this regard with PyPi and pip install, even though virtual envs are pain.

https://central.sonatype.com/ and https://mvnrepository.com/ are exactly that

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