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How Ant Changed My Life

Let's talk about Ant for a moment and how it has basically changed my life. Talk about an awakening.

Ant is basically a version of Make. I've never used Make, so I haven't a clue how that works... but I'm sure someone out there knows how Make does its thing.

You see, Ant is awesome. It allows you to automate your builds. You can compile and run Java programs using Ant. You can create directories, zip up files, delete directories and lots of other things.

Whenever I create a new Java project, I usually create an Ant build to go with it. Heck, I've even used Ant for web projects allowing me to push a website I'm testing into the localhost folder so I can view it with my web browser. I've even setup Ant to handle database creation, e-mailing updated files to my gmail account, and even ftping files to my live server. Talk about efficiency!

Talk about making my life easier.

Seriously, if you've not checked out Ant... you should. It's well worth it.

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