Gradle can become a mess when people want to show their smartness with the build system, don't allow them (even better if one just avoids Gradle entirely).
Maven works fine, it has so much history that most problems you encounter have been solved. It's also pluggable so you can extend to your heart's desires (but you shouldn't, same as Gradle when people try to be too smart with plugins it's time to tell them to stop).
Could it be better? Of course! But just as the rest of Java: it gets the job done, and it's absolutely fine after you deal with some idiosyncrasies. Every programming language environment has their own unique set of idiosyncrasies to deal with.
Java is a workhorse, it's not sexy, it's not pretty but will get you pretty far in most production environments.
Maven works fine, it has so much history that most problems you encounter have been solved. It's also pluggable so you can extend to your heart's desires (but you shouldn't, same as Gradle when people try to be too smart with plugins it's time to tell them to stop).
Could it be better? Of course! But just as the rest of Java: it gets the job done, and it's absolutely fine after you deal with some idiosyncrasies. Every programming language environment has their own unique set of idiosyncrasies to deal with.
Java is a workhorse, it's not sexy, it's not pretty but will get you pretty far in most production environments.