The absolutely atrocious current cmake language (where you can't even make a list of strings! The ONE THING a make replacement should fix!), in combination with

The absolutely atrocious current cmake language (where you can't even make a list of strings! The ONE THING a make replacement should fix!), in combination with the prevalence of legacy cmake everywhere (even in Find*.cmake files distributed by cmake!), are the two primary reasons why I'm using and rooting for Meson over CMake. But its biggest issue, arguably, is the extreme proliferation of bad information. Everything on StackOverflow and similar sites is outdated and bad practice for the most part. You're right that introducing a new language which deprecates the old will make this an even bigger issue.