I wanted to say exactly this. I wouldn't choose Make to build a software project these days (probably), but I use it all the time for exactly what the author de

I wanted to say exactly this. I wouldn't choose Make to build a software project these days (probably), but I use it all the time for exactly what the author describes: recording/managing a data processing workflow. For stats/ML exploratory work, it's invaluable, because everything you do is recorded in various targets. It makes my one-off scripts not quite so one-off, so when I revisit the code six months later, I can quickly figure out what I was doing. It also means less typing, because every command is just `make foo`, and that delegates out to R/Ruby/Python scripts, shell pipelines, or whatever I need. I'm delighted that someone else is (ab)using make the same way!