Why? Because make works. Because it's actually easy to understand if you've read the manual. It's simple. People try to make it do really complicated things, which you are better off putting in a script or another program. At it's core, make works and does its job very, very well.

Here is a very beautiful, readable, portable makefile: https://github.com/git/git/blob/master/Makefile

It's hard to write portable anything without details leaking out. Go is the best implementation I've ever seen here. It works identically everywhere I've tried it. The approach the Go team has taken is extreme. I think that says a lot.

Both these tools are very simple, and limit what you can do. When you try to go outside the box, you hurt yourself. Don't hurt yourself.

Tools like Gradle make it real easy to hurt yourself without realizing it.