Another maven user here.. and Ill tell you why its better than ant. Yes the convention over configuration is the reason. I can look at project structure, and know exactly where to find everything download dependencies and be up and productive in little time. Working at several different companies, with ant, you will find that different structures, trying to figure out where to get dependencies.. etc. Higher cost to start 2. The dependency issue the author is talking about( and seems like his main issue) is false. You should have a dedicated private repository like archiva, and you will never have issues. Just like large projects have a build manager, you should be managing dependencies yourself. 3. Very configurable, there are plenty of plugins, and you can write your own. 4. verbose ?? obviously you haven't see some major ant scripts. But yes it can get large in a single large project but the design convention would be to have a common pom, and break your project into modules.