Seems like the typical reaction seen over and over. People love to hate maven. It always goes like this:
1) try maven but don't bother to RTFM
2) run away with your hair on fire and back to cave-man tools like Make, Rake & Ant
3) ignore dependency management
4) re-invent the build script for _EVERY_ project you start.
5) ???
6) profit!!!
You only ever hear rants like this from people who don't spend the time to learn maven. It's not that hard. This is just rants.