Makefiles are older than Doom why are we still using them?

It’s 2025. we’re building apps with AI copilots, deploying to the edge in seconds… and still debugging tab errors in Makefiles.

Introduction: welcome to the year 2025, where some tools just won’t die

Let’s set the scene.

It’s a sunny Monday. You clone an open-source C++ project from GitHub, full of hope. You run make, expecting magic. Instead, you get this:

Makefile:12: *** missing separator.  Stop.

You stare at your screen. The terminal stares back. A single misplaced tab character just halted your productivity like Gandalf yelling “you shall not pass.”

Congratulations: you’ve entered the ancient ruins of software development. Welcome to the world of make a tool so old that it predates Super Mario Bros. and The Breakfast Club. Seriously. It was born in 1977, formally standardized in 1988, and is still somehow lurking in build systems in 2025.

Now, to be fair, make had a good run. It still works. It’s everywhere. But we need to ask:
is it still the best tool for the job?
Or are we just too scared to replace it?

This article is a no-fluff, dev-to-dev walkthrough of make's history, pain points, weird syntax, and the modern build tools that try (and mostly fail) to replace it. You’ll get laughs, memes, some scars, and a few ideas for how to avoid gray hairs while automating builds.

And yes we’ll drop one meme mid-article. Just tell me when you’re ready for that.

Section 2: the old king what is make and why devs feared it

Before Git, before VS Code themes, before you could run npm install and get 400MB of stuff you didn’t ask for… there was make.

At its core, make is a build automation tool. It was created for a simpler time when compiling code meant typing cc into a terminal, not clicking “build & deploy to production” from a Figma prototype.

The concept was revolutionary:
You write a Makefile that defines targets (like build, clean, install), and make figures out what needs to be built, in what order, and only builds the stuff that changed.
This was a massive win for early UNIX developers dealing with massive C codebases.

But here’s the twist:
make didn’t just become powerful it became arcane.

Its syntax is best described as “shell scripting with a sprinkle of black magic”:

main.o: main.c defs.h
    $(CC) -c main.c

Looks harmless, right? But if you accidentally use spaces instead of a tab before the $(CC) line… make explodes. It won’t say “hey, wrong indentation!” It’ll just say:

*** missing separator. Stop.

And that’s your only clue.

Developers learned quickly: indentation wasn’t just a style it was a blood pact.

This fearsome trait turned make into a tool you don’t learn as much as you survive. Like Vim, but less friendly. Like regex, but with worse error messages. Like Dark Souls, but you can't even roll.

Still, it was everywhere. Bundled with UNIX. Free. No install step. It just… worked. And when you got it right, it felt like casting a spell:

make build

✨ Boom. Magic.

But what happens when the world moves on and the wizard refuses to retire?

Section 3: how make still survives in 2025

You’d think a tool from the disco era would’ve gracefully bowed out by now, but no.
In the year of AI codegen and GitHub Copilot X, make is still kicking and not just in hobby projects buried on SourceForge.

Let’s break down the main places where make still lurks like an immortal vampire in your codebase:

1. C and C++ build systems

Old school devs? Still living that gcc/clang life.
Embedded systems? They require absolute control.
Makefiles are their bread, butter, and build pipeline.

Modern alternatives exist (hello, CMake ), but they often just generate Makefiles under the hood. It's like putting a tuxedo on a skeleton you're still partying with the dead.

2. Scientific computing & academia

Professors aren’t switching to pnpm. Sorry.
Tons of academic tools, simulations, and research codebases still rely on make, mostly because:

• It’s portable across Linux clusters
• It doesn’t need fancy dependencies
• And someone wrote that Makefile in 2006 and retired

Touch it, and you risk breaking someone’s PhD.

3. DevOps and CI/CD edge cases

Even modern infrastructure sometimes pulls in make during Docker builds, deployment steps, or Makefile wrappers for CLI utilities.

You’ll see it as a universal entry point in monorepos:

make dev
make test
make deploy

Even if under the hood it just proxies to npm, docker-compose, or bash scripts. It’s kind of like the Batman of CLI tools a weird, brooding interface that still gets the job done.

4. Open source projects with legacy muscle

Want to contribute to some cool project from 2013 that still works today? Good luck you’re dealing with a Makefile. It’s probably full of variables like $(SRC) and flags like -Wall -Wextra -Werror that you don’t understand but are too afraid to remove.

Maintainers will say, “PRs welcome!”
But your PR fails CI because you added a space instead of a tab. Classic.

So yeah make isn’t dead.
It’s just quietly embedded into the backbone of systems you use every day.
Kind of like COBOL. Or duct tape.

Section 4: the pain points we don’t talk about

Let’s be real: the only reason people aren’t constantly dragging make on X (formerly known as Twitter) is because they’re too busy rage-Googling cryptic errors to tweet about them.

For all its nostalgic charm and raw speed, make is a walking red flag when it comes to modern developer experience. Here's what developers whisper to each other at night, afraid to say out loud:

Tabs vs spaces: the war that never ended

If you indent a recipe line with spaces instead of a tab, make will crash.
It won’t tell you why. It’ll just scream something like:

Makefile:22: *** missing separator.  Stop.

Oh cool, a separator. That’s a helpful message… if you’re a time traveler from 1985.

This is why half of every Makefile PR on GitHub looks like:

-    gcc -c main.c
+    gcc -c main.c

Only a tab. One character. One rage-filled debugging session later.

No clue about your real dependencies

make watches file timestamps. That’s it.

So if you change a header file deep in your C project but don’t touch the .c file, it might just skip rebuilding unless you explicitly define the dependency.
Hope you like debugging segfaults!

Unlike modern tools that can crawl your whole dependency graph (webpack, esbuild, even npm), make assumes you know everything. Which, lol, you don’t.

Portability: Windows is allergic

Sure, you can run make on Windows just install GNU Make via Chocolatey, make sure you're using a bash shell, pray your PATH is correct, sacrifice a goat...

Okay, jokes aside: it’s annoying.
Native Windows users often hit weird shell compatibility problems unless you’re WSL’ing your way through life.

Meanwhile, tools like Just, Taskfile, or even npm scripts run smoother across OSes.

Debugging is guesswork

Ever try printing out a variable in a Makefile?

$(info $(CC))

…Cool.
Now try debugging a conditional execution path that failed because you didn’t escape a $ properly or used := instead of = and wonder why the build is broken in CI but fine locally.

The Makefile feels like writing code on hard mode with the lights off and no linting.

So yeah. make is powerful. But it’s also fragile, dated, and anti-human by modern dev ergonomics.

You don’t need to hate it just don’t pretend it’s painless.

Section 5: the modern alternatives can they replace make?

Developers are a clever bunch. We don’t just complain we build new tools to complain about later.
Over the years, several modern build tools have stepped up and said:

“What if we fixed make without the soul-crushing tab errors?”

Let’s look at the contenders that are trying to dethrone the king (or at least clean up his mess):

CMake

Nickname: “make, but with even more layers”

• What it does: A meta-build system. You write CMakeLists.txt files and it generates Makefiles or Ninja configs.
• Good: Cross-platform, heavily used in C/C++ world, IDE support.
• Pain: Its syntax is… not exactly intuitive. You’ll Google everything twice.

cmake

add_executable(main main.cpp utils.cpp)

Still better than dealing with raw tabs, but learning CMake feels like going from Assembly to LISP.

Ninja

Nickname: “faster than make, because it does less”

• What it does: Focuses purely on fast incremental builds. Often used under the hood by CMake.
• Good: Insanely fast, minimal overhead.
• Pain: Not human-friendly. You don’t write Ninja files manually. It’s like working with bytecode.

Just

Nickname: “make, but actually fun”

• What it does: A command runner with a Justfile syntax that looks like a cleaner, YAML-ish Makefile.
• Good: Friendly, supports variables, recipes, dotenv, and nice error messages.
• Pain: Not preinstalled like make, so you have to convince your team to install Yet Another Tool™.

build:
    gcc main.c -o main

Bonus: just lets you write comments like a normal human:

# this builds the project
build:
    gcc main.c -o main

Imagine that.

Taskfile

Nickname: “make for the YAML generation”

• What it does: Used mainly in Go and Docker-heavy projects. Think make, but YAML and platform-aware.
• Good: Clean syntax, good support for cross-OS scripting.
• Pain: Still niche, more popular in DevOps circles than general dev.

version: '3'

tasks:
  build:
    cmds:
      - go build -o bin/app main.go

Others in the wild

• Bazel Google’s mega-scalable build tool (think “Enterprise make on steroids”)
• Rake Ruby’s build system; used more in Rails era
• Gulp/Grunt Remember those? Good times.
• npm scripts Yup. You can just do "build": "tsc && vite" and call it a day.

So… can these tools replace make?

Yes in many cases.

But will they?

Not always.

Because while new tools offer better syntax, clearer docs, and a smoother dev experience, make is:

• Already installed
• Already integrated
• Already understood (well… sorta)

Sometimes, momentum beats modernization.

Section 6: why make refuses to die (and maybe that’s okay?)

Despite its quirks, curses, and tab-based trauma, make refuses to go quietly into that good night.
While newer tools offer better ergonomics, developers keep coming back to this cranky old wizard.
Why?

Let’s unpack why make is still alive and maybe even deserves its spot.

1. It’s already there

You don’t install make. It’s just there.
On Linux? Yup.
On macOS? Yup.
On your Docker base image? Absolutely.
Even WSL has it ready to go.

If your toolchain needs a no-setup solution that just works, make is the last boomer standing.

2. It’s featherlight

No node_modules.
No 300 dependencies.
No YAML linting or plugin configs.
You write a few lines, and boom builds run.

For small CLI tools, scripts, or just wiring shell commands together, make is still the MVP.

3. It’s deeply embedded in tooling

A lot of tools, especially in C/C++ ecosystems, generate Makefiles or assume you’re using them.

• Your IDE expects them (CLion, Vim, etc.)
• Your CI pipeline calls them
• Your boss’s boss doesn’t want to rewrite them

Even modern builders like CMake or Meson often fall back to make for execution. It's the duct tape of dev tooling no one likes it, but everyone uses it.

4. It’s minimal, not bloated

Sure, it’s old but so is the command line.
And both are still with us because they do one thing well.

make doesn’t try to manage your packages, lint your code, or draw ASCII art. It just says:

“What needs to be built? Cool. Let’s do that.”

And sometimes, that’s all you really need.

5. We’re nostalgic creatures

Let’s be honest.
Developers are sentimental.
We still joke about Vim vs Emacs. We still write Python 2 scripts “just for fun.” Heck, some of us run Neofetch every time we open a terminal for aesthetic reasons.

Make is… legendary. And legends don’t die easily.

So maybe it’s not about killing make.
Maybe it’s about knowing when to use it, and when to use something better.

If your project is small, Unixy, and doesn’t need cross-platform gymnastics make might still be your guy.
Just don’t let him near your React monorepo, okay?

Section 8: the future of build tools

So where are we headed?

We’ve been living with make for nearly half a century, but software has changed more in the last 5 years than the previous 30. We have AI pair programmers now. CI/CD is table stakes. Everyone’s running Docker, deploying to the edge, or rewriting things in Rust for “fun.”

Yet… builds are still breaking because someone used spaces.

Let’s talk about where build systems could and should go in the future and what devs are actually hoping for.

AI-powered build automation

Why are we still writing manual dependency chains?

Imagine this:

• You paste your source files into a folder.
• The build system reads the file types, detects relationships, and generates the build logic for you.
• You confirm it like a pull request, not write it line by line.

AI-driven tools like GitHub Copilot and Replit’s Ghostwriter already help write code why not build scripts?

Declarative > imperative

One reason make is hard to manage: it mixes what to build with how to build it.

Modern tools are moving toward declarative setups:

build:
  input: src/
  output: dist/
  language: typescript

You describe the intent, not the execution. Let the tool figure out whether to use tsc, vite, or a secret gnome in your CPU.

Ecosystem-aware build systems

Imagine a build tool that:

• Knows your language and framework
• Detects packages you use (vite, next, rustc)
• Optimizes based on your OS, CPU cores, and target environment
• Works across frontend, backend, infra, and docs

Some tools are getting close Nx, Rome, and Bazel aim for this, but usually require corporate-scale effort to adopt. Still, the dream is real.

Unified CLI commands

Devs are tired of memorizing:

npm run build
cargo build
go build
python setup.py build
make build

Why not just… one thing?

Imagine:

dev build
dev test
dev deploy

One tool. One interface. Zero yak shaving.
You’d spend less time reading README.md and more time building.

Bonus idea: build sandboxing

In the future, maybe builds will run like isolated VMs

• No access to system files unless declared
• Deterministic, reproducible outputs
• Signed, cacheable artifacts
• No “works on my machine” problems

Oh wait, that’s already happening… in Nix. If you’ve got the patience of a saint and 14 hours to spare, you might just learn it.

In short: devs don’t want just a build tool.
We want a smart, context-aware, fast, and friendly build buddy.

We want make, but… built for 2025, not 1988.

Section 9: real dev stories when make broke my brain

Let’s pour one out for all the devs who’ve been personally victimized by make.

Because behind every broken build is a broken soul.
Here are a few war stories from the trenches shared in forums, GitHub issues, and dev confessionals. Names changed to protect the sleep-deprived.

“The tab that ruined my weekend”

“I spent 6 hours debugging a build failure on our CI pipeline. The Makefile looked perfect… until I realized I had copied a command from Notion and it replaced tabs with spaces. I now have a rule: never trust formatted text editors.”
A senior developer with trust issues

“Make ate my variables”

“I wrote a Makefile where a variable wasn’t expanding right. Turned out I used = instead of :=. I didn’t sleep. I didn't eat. I stared into the abyss. The abyss had Make syntax.”
A DevOps engineer with PTSD (Post-Tabs Syntax Disorder)

“Build worked on my machine, then summoned demons in prod”

“It ran fine locally. But on prod servers with slightly different versions of make, certain conditionals behaved differently. I didn’t know make had dialects. Dialects. This isn’t French. It’s a build tool.”
Anonymous, because they still haven’t fixed it

“My first open source PR got rejected because I used a space”

“I submitted my first ever pull request to a CLI project. Maintainer left one comment: ‘Please use a tab like the Makefile gods intended.’ I haven’t touched Makefiles since.”
A junior dev who now only uses just out of spite

The takeaway?
We’ve all been there.
The Makefile doesn’t just break your build. It breaks your spirit one silent failure at a time.

But you’re not alone.

And every time you rage-commit with make it work, you join a proud, broken brotherhood.

Section 10: Conclusion Should we improve make or bury it?

So, here we are.

After wandering through decades of developer history, tab trauma, and terminal rage, one question remains:

Should make be finally laid to rest, or does it still have a place in our toolkits?

Here’s the answer like all good dev takes: it depends.

When to keep using make:

• You’re working on low-level projects in C/C++ or embedded systems.
• You need something preinstalled, dead simple, and dependency-free.
• Your project is small, cross-platform isn’t critical, and you’re not onboarding juniors daily.
• You enjoy living dangerously.

When to move on:

• You’re building web apps, microservices, or multi-language projects.
• Your team needs clear syntax, better error messages, and platform portability.
• You want to spend more time shipping code than debugging indentation errors.
• You believe developers deserve humane build tooling in 2025.

Here’s the honest truth:
make is not bad it’s just not for everyone anymore.
It’s like writing assembly code: sometimes necessary, always impressive, but rarely joyful.

The real goal isn’t to shame old tools. It’s to build new ones that learn from their pain, preserve the good parts, and ditch the rest.

So whether you stick with make, switch to just, or write a custom Go CLI like a lunatic, just remember:

The best tool is the one that keeps your build green and your sanity intact.

Helpful resources

• GNU Make Manual
• Justfile (Command Runner)
• Ninja Build Tool
• Taskfile.dev
• YouTube: “Makefiles Are From Hell” funny dev talk
• Modern CMake Tutorial
• xkcd on Build Systems

Need a TL;DR?

• make is a legend.
• You don’t owe it your career.
• If you’re still suffering from space-vs-tab bugs in 2025… it’s okay to ask for better.

Comments

[Madhurima Rawat]

Your posts are great! Just a small tip — try not to post too many articles in one day (like 6-7).

Instead, space them out: maybe 1 or 2 articles with a 3-4 hour gap between them, then continue the rest the next day. Posting too many at once can overwhelm readers, and some articles might get overlooked. 📚✨

If you're busy, you can also use the schedule post option (available under the ⚙️ gear icon). That way, you can maintain consistency and get better engagement! 📅

[Dotallio]

Tabs haunt me too