One thing make allows you to do is incremental runs. For example, if the first step in your shell script costs 1/2 hour, you really don't want to run the shell

One thing make allows you to do is incremental runs. For example, if the first step in your shell script costs 1/2 hour, you really don't want to run the shell script over and over again when you are debugging the next step. Yes, you can implement your own caching logic in your shell script, but its usually much better to use a tool specifically designed for that job.