Most developers use it daily but treat it like a black box: they copy and paste scripts they don’t fully understand, avoid touching build logic, and hope that everything just works. But Gradle doesn’t have to be scary or frustrating.

In this talk, we’ll demystify how Gradle works under the hood. You’ll gain a clear mental model of the build lifecycle, understand the difference between configuration and execution phases, and learn how tasks, plugins, and dependencies interact. We’ll walk through real-world examples from Android projects to show how small changes in build logic can lead to clearer, faster, and more maintainable builds.