I don't have much experience with makefiles but for shell scripts, I tend to think that your approach is correct as long as you're working with small or fairly

I don't have much experience with makefiles but for shell scripts, I tend to think that your approach is correct as long as you're working with small or fairly trivial files. If the file is small enough to see all at once (and your terminal window or editor isn't outrageously large), then mentally, you can take in the whole thing at once. Once the file starts to get even a little bit complicated, you'll want those abstractions.