I had a similar epiphany a year or so ago. After cursing make files and their syntax for so long, I had arrived at a moment in which the project I was working o

I had a similar epiphany a year or so ago. After cursing make files and their syntax for so long, I had arrived at a moment in which the project I was working on truly called for make. The project assumed no other dependencies than a standard *nix OS and needed some simple compilation. So I sat down with the make documentation and in an hour had basically figured out what I needed. Almost no pain, super speedy, little trouble. Admittedly the syntax is /unique/ to makefiles, which I think is the biggest downside. There is a huge benefit to not having to learn one more way of doing things. And I think that's the big appeal of tools like rake (as well as the ability to easily leverage, libraries, and other higher order programming concepts). But for the simple tasks of compilation, and minor project management. Give me Make.