What tools/infrastructure do you wish existed?

I'd like a better build system for JVM apps. The standard is Gradle, which is powerful but hard to use. Unfortunately most other alternatives fail on basics like easy dependency management, support for languages, IDE integration and so on. This is something that bugs me enough I'd consider paying for it, and even considered doing as a product myself, but it's hard to know if there's even a market for paid build systems. Gradle has Gradle Enterprise but it's not actually a build system, and hard to know if they really make money given that they were raising rounds for the last 10+ years.

One idea I've been toying wit (but don't have the skills to implement) is a standard for hardware that's a bit more verbose than things like i2c or serial. I'd like one connector I can plug into a piece of hardware (a sensor, a servo, a keypad, etc) and have it just work. The protocol would have to be a bit more complicated, maybe something like PJON^1, and you'd need to deliver power at a few different voltages.

I've been calling it kitbash in my head, just throw a bunch of components together in various topologies and you're good to go. Considering you can get a very cheap microcontroller for something like 40 cents I can definitely see the appeal of adding a "kitbash port" to various pieces of hardware, even if it means adding a whole new microcontroller.

1: https://github.com/gioblu/PJON

Remote android app development.