I have worked with maple, I'm going to use a bit of fresh sugar maple on my next barn just because there are a few trees standing where the building needs to go. It's not really that fun.

But I can take you to a super nice Swiss style forebay barn a few miles from me, the lower beams are ALL sugar maple (probably for the same reason, the trees stood where the barn needed to go)

After having worked with white pine, I seek it out for everything now. I've become a pine man.