Makefile was not originally designed to be a general-purpose language but eventually grew features and pretends to be one. If a proper general-purpose language

Makefile was not originally designed to be a general-purpose language but eventually grew features and pretends to be one. If a proper general-purpose language with a well-designed library (possibly plus a general-purpose data-only configuration language) is capable of performing the core function of an "interpreted DSL", even at some cost of terseness, I would strongly prefer it to the DSL. While having multiple libraries in different languages might contribute to fragmentation, being able to write the build scripts in the same language as the rest of your project provides value. > > The dense syntax of command line tool options is intimidating > Anything you don't understand very well can be intimidating. IMHO what's intimidating is not the CLI itself, but possibly: 1. lack of consistent convention between different tools (only PowerShell attempted to address this) 2. poor discoverability of options, which is often exacerbated by poor quality of documentation 3. naming of things (which is getting better with more modern CLI tools) 4. ...