Wow, you really make it sound amazing! So yes, I would like to use gradle. And so I've been looking around and trying to learn more about it. Seems similar to make, which I've used in the past. I'm unclear how to get it to work with eclipse though. I try going to File -> Import -> Existing Gradle Project, point it to a directory where I put the build.gradle file, and I ultimately end up with the following error:
Could not run build action using Gradle distribution 'https://services.gradle.org/distributions/gradle-4.8.1-bin.zip'.
Build file 'D:\Dev\lwjgl-3.2.1\build.gradle' line: 11
A problem occurred evaluating root project 'lwjgl-3.2.1'.
Could not find method implementation() for arguments [org.lwjgl:lwjgl:3.2.1] on object of type org.gradle.api.internal.artifacts.dsl.dependencies.DefaultDependencyHandler.
Things are not seeming very intuitive, and I don't really know where to go exactly for answers. It always seems like getting setup to program is always more difficult than actually programming. Was true 20 years ago and appears to still be true today. I am an experienced programmer, btw. While new to Java and it's trappings, I have a lot of experience with C/C++, though I admit I've haven't really been active with it that recently. I have worked with OpenGL before, with C++ through the SDL library, and I'm thinking that lwjgl is kind of similar in nature to what SDL is all about, which is why I wanted to utilize it. I think I would be good to go if I could just figure out how to get eclipse and lwjgl working together in harmony. If you can suggest any good starting points for learning gradle from the ground up, would be much appreciated.