I have a project written entirely in Java, and using several external Java libraries (Hibernate, a couple of Apache Commons, MQ, pretty standard stuff). I've been working with Eclipse, but this pro... More on stackoverflow.com

That's a lot of things, but I'll answer the one in your title. Maven serves two main functions: dependency management and builds. Dependency Management: Nearly all projects will require some library code, and those libraries depend on other libraries, and so on. Now you could manually download all of those libraries and put them on the classpath, but that's a pain. With Maven, you simply list out the libraries you need and which versions you want and it does all the hard work for you. Builds: So now that you have all of those libraries and your application code, you need to bundle it up to deploy. Maybe you need to deploy it to a web application server, for example. Well maven will take care of that too. (Note: There's a lot more you can do with this because there are tons of maven plugins). More on reddit.com

Maven for Java? Maven is a dependency management system that helps manage your build / lifecycle. Consider you had a massive Java project with over 100 dependencies? Every time a new developer starts you have to send them an email or to a website to download all of those Deps, you have to show them how to add it to the project...etc What about managing your own dependencies so everyone has the same copy of a specific dependency?? It really sucks to find someone is working with an outdated version of your library/API because you forgot to resend out your latest Jar and have them include it in their project (which also sucks). Maven solves this... Maven lets you create a single pom file that specifies which libraries to use and what versions. Your file will specify which libraries to use and and what phases to use them. You can specify the scope of the dependency as well, whether it is test build, compilation...etc This lets you only include what is needed for your project to compile depending upon the context. Eclipse, IntelliJ, NetBeans...etc all support the concept of a maven project. Instead of having to manually manage your dependencies Maven will do so. Maven can be used to specify a target output, or to even create runnable WAR files to drop in Tomcat/Glassfish...etc It's a pretty powerful tool and very useful for managing a large project. I have since switched to gradle though, it is a similar tool in a similar vein. More on reddit.com

Can you share the contents of your pom.xml so we can first check that for any possible issues? Have you tried building manually from the command line? mvn clean install from the project root (where the pom.xml is located). Same issue? Lastly, while VS Code does support Java development through addons it's not really the most stable or solid option. You're probably better off grabbing a dedicated Java IDE like IntelliJ IDEA, Eclipse or Netbeans. They are all very mature tools with large user bases and a lot of support available. More on reddit.com