If one wants to create an Ant project from within NetBeans, then one should be able to do that.
I've encountered both Maven and Gradle (Gradle when developing for Android on IntelliJ... another anecdote about frustration), and I can see their use when one has to manage one's code base against differing versions of third party libraries. That's great, but if one is merely doing something small, especially something that might showcase some feature of SE without bringing in functionality of third party libraries, Ant leaves the developer alone to do that. All the stuff that Gradle and Maven introduce to one's build script becomes useless boilerplate - a distraction especially when one merely wants to demonstrate or learn a feature of the SE API and perhaps even to grasp some of the necessity of the build script itself. It's not difficult to move a project to Maven or Gradle or any other build script. Copy one's /src directory from the Ant project to the appropriate directory of the destination project (maybe set a main class) and off you go. Novice developers can easily be scared into withdrawal by considerations that are not salient to their aims, and the distractions that Maven/Gradle build scripts introduce can only encourage withdrawal into those developers who are trying to navigate this world alone. I would consider it a backward step if NB were to adopt the position of other IDEs and appropriate an air of superiority around the choice of build script. Because nothing more than an air of superiority is projected by an IDE that doesn't permit the creation of Ant projects. I like Ant. Ant is good. Leave Ant alone. Done. Owen.
