We have been slowly replacing batch command files (windows .bat) which were simply jarring up the classes compiled in the developers IDE, with more comprehensive Ant builds (i.e. get from CVS, clean compile, jar, archive, email, etc.)

I've spent a lot of time learning (and debugging issues) with Ant, so I'm most comfortable using it for these tasks. But I wonder if Ant is still in as wide usage as it was when I first started learning, or whether "the world has moved on" to something newer (and maybe slicker). (I've started to see more Maven build stuff distributed, which I've never used, for example.)

The practical import of this question, is whether I push new developers to learn Ant, or whether they should be learning something else for builds?

I'm never too on top of the trends, so it would be great to hear from other Java developers what they think is the best build tool, and what they think new developers should be learning.