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Make is extremely useful, but it is not simple or pretty.

I honestly think instead of teaching make, it would be easier to refine it and then teach the simpler, more elegant make.

honestly, there is SO much low-hanging fruit.

- tabs vs spaces, indentation, the mess of continuing multiline statements

- variables are inelegant, interpreted out-of-order, and = vs :=

- quoting maintains the mess of the rest of linux where you confuse a literal vs a special character

- files, directories and targets (.PHONY) are confusing

and lots more all the way down



Those are good complaints but what's far more valuable is:

- Unix standard

- documentation

- established knowledge

- existing code bases

- stable and well tested


> Unix standard

That’s enough? What about 1/2 - 1/3 of the devs on windows?


Yes? Everyone benefits from a standard specification.

Besides, most windows devs are using Ubuntu or cygwin. Or they just the ide for their environment and would never touch a CLI




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