His point was that all of $@, $%, $? have more descriptive names as well, you don't need to use these single character macros. Also you probably meant ?= inste

His point was that all of $@, $%, $? have more descriptive names as well, you don't need to use these single character macros. Also you probably meant ?= instead of := as the command you gave would still use /some/path instead of /other/path if you use :=.