There isn't one for c++ unfortunately

Don't know what qualifies as a Scotsman to you, but CMake is more modern than Makefile.

Yep, CMake. It has a weird string-typed syntax, and an even weirder function/function parameter syntax, but those are the most egregious issues.

Target-based CMake is extremely straightforward to get started with, and CMake + Ninja is also frequently significantly faster than the alternatives (autoconf tools).

It also easily hooks into package managers for C++ (Conan, vcpkg) and today, users can write C++ like they do JS or rust, with a `vcpkg.json` file, top-level CMakeLists.txt file, and pretty much that's it.

Don't use make! Use a makefile generator!

(hope the sarcasm is obvious)

CMake is pretty good, so is Meson, so is Conan. All of them have some unfortunate shortcomings that make the C++ ecosystem hard to work in, but the biggest problem is diversity of build systems for dependencies.

XMake is by far the best option. There is nothing even close in feature completeness, nor in user friendliness.