Fair point. But I'd say the dependency management in maven is actually more of a hassle than it's worth. For me, I understand jars in a lib directory well enough. Dependency management can become complicated pretty fast (e.g. version resolution).

You still need version resolution for jars in a lib directory, whether Maven does it or you do it.

Maven just automates the process.

I guess I never found manual dependency resolution to be that big of a problem.

I've never found automatic dependency resolution to be that big of a problem.

But if I had, I'm sure that manual resolution wouldn't have been any easier or more maintainable.