Importance of tools like Ant Maven

I am a novice programmer in Java. I would like to know how important is it working on tools like maven/ant as compared to gaini开发者_JAVA技巧ng a lot of hands on expereince in Java.

I would stick to first learning java. Tools like Ant and Maven are mostly used for packaging a project and library dependencies.

Both tools are also powered by Java so after learning abit of Java it will definately be easier to master them.

Basically when you feel like you need a solution for building your projects, it is time to have a look at Ant or Maven.

For myself I started using Ant when I got started with Hibernate, Maven came years later.

maven/ant could simplify some of your jobs. like building, dependency mgmt, deployment etc. And they are very important in real projects.

However, it only makes sense, if you know how to build/using libraries/deploy without those handy tools. If you have no idea about how to do them by hand, it's hard to use maven/ant correctly.

my 2 cents

You definitely need to know both (at some point in your career). Ant/Maven (Gradle anyone?) are indispensable for non-trivial projects, but you also need to know the details of how those tools are working.