Earlier quoted context omitted.
Gradle is pure insanity. Take a JVM-based scripting language that no one uses, and base an entire build-tool around it - complete with a custom DSL - that is so slow it needs to be run in the background as a service to be even somewhat performant, and make sure that each new version somehow breaks older build scripts so that you're constantly being prompted to update, and then being prompted to fix whatever the updat…
Maven is very unintuitive though, at least Gradle does a better job on the CLI interface. Hopefully we'll get better options on the JVM in the future.
Honestly, I find Maven more intuitive. Gradle is too flexible, you can have dozens of way to perform one task. With maven, you often search for one plugin that does what you want and stick with that. Of course, if there's no existing plugin that fit you, then it gets much more complicated, but that case is usually rare due to maven's massive number of plugins.