# sbt

5 Hacker News commenters recommended sbt and 11 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 6 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Free Scala build tool that people praise for fewer footguns since 1.0 and for standardizing builds, though many find it complex, unpleasant and prone to breaking builds.

## Why people recommend it

- Improved since the 1.0 release (2 comments): "sbt has improved a lot, the DX is mostly fine since the 1.0 release" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46097378)) "SBT cleared a lot of footguns in the last decade or so" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50146850))
- Preferred over other JVM build tools (2 comments): "I'd pick sbt over these two without thinking, even for pure Java projects." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46113486)) "sbt is not the biggest offender there" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46098229))

## What people warn about

- Unpleasant to work with (5 comments): "any time I get back to a repo that has that instead of gradle or sbt I'm much happier" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48315465)) "dealing with sbt left a horrible taste in my mouth" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46096238)) "I can't even describe how much I dislike SBT." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48867937))
- Complex and hard to learn (3 comments): "sbt harmed adoption in the first place and continued to represent a barrier to Scala's adoption for years" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46106760)) "sbt being one of the first things you deal with when learning the language didn't help." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50143461)) "sbt got too complex for it's own good" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49712972))
- Breaks builds and deprecations (2 comments): "somebody has to maintain your builds, and handle all those fun deprecations" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46115354)) "sbt breaking our builds every six months or so has become quite tiresome" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50147759))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Bazel](https://hackerapproved.com/p/bazel.md): 79 recommend
- [GNU Make](https://hackerapproved.com/p/gnu-make.md): 76 recommend
- [CMake](https://hackerapproved.com/p/cmake.md): 58 recommend
- [Apache Maven](https://hackerapproved.com/p/maven.md): 44 recommend
- [Ninja build system](https://hackerapproved.com/p/ninja.md): 37 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "sbt", https://hackerapproved.com/p/sbt/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).