I don't think Gradle needs to spam HN for publicity. It is the #2 (subjectively ranked) build system for Java and other JVM-based languages, and is arguably on the cusp on overtaking Maven for the #1 spot if it has not done so already. It has a pretty tight relationship with Spring and Grails, two of the top three frameworks for doing Java web development.
If you've done any real Java development within the past five years, then you at least know what Gradle is. If you haven't, then you won't, and that is perfectly okay. Frankly, this maxim is true of half the announcements on HN. If I don't recognize something at all, then usually it's a random Rust or Julia thing... and I've grown to conditioned to simply ignore it and skim onward.
I do agree that any public announcements SHOULD include a blurb for the new people who are hearing about the subject for the very first time. As far as HN irritations go, however, that bothers me a lot less than the tendency of announcement threads to turn "meta". Fewer comments on the subject matter itself... more comments on the announcement’s font selection or color scheme, copy verbiage, logo design, or just completely random digressions to discuss why Rust does it better, etc.
Does Grails and Gradle really have a tight relationship? In the past my experience has been that these two work really poorly together. Has this changed?
Both Grails and Gradle ship with the Groovy Language, and are its main two products by number of users - if they disappeared, Groovy's only use of any significance would be short scripts manipulating and testing Java classes. (Though I'm not sure if I'd describe Gradle build scripts as "using" Groovy, more like 50 lines using a tiny subset of Groovy's grammar and functionality.)
And of course Grails is promoted by VMWare and Gradle by GradleWare. There's no info about GradleWare's true owners in the verbiage on their about page. Either they want to be bought by VMWare, or they were started with seed money from them and effectively controlled by them.
Spring documentation and example apps these days are primarily Gradle-based, with Maven as a secondary option. I don't see Ant or Maven being displaced on very mature legacy applications, but my anecdotal sense is that Gradle already has the lead now in new greenfield development.
If you've done any real Java development within the past five years, then you at least know what Gradle is. If you haven't, then you won't, and that is perfectly okay. Frankly, this maxim is true of half the announcements on HN. If I don't recognize something at all, then usually it's a random Rust or Julia thing... and I've grown to conditioned to simply ignore it and skim onward.
I do agree that any public announcements SHOULD include a blurb for the new people who are hearing about the subject for the very first time. As far as HN irritations go, however, that bothers me a lot less than the tendency of announcement threads to turn "meta". Fewer comments on the subject matter itself... more comments on the announcement’s font selection or color scheme, copy verbiage, logo design, or just completely random digressions to discuss why Rust does it better, etc.