Fair. But as said, in my experience, they remain useful and simple for a pretty long time. I usually always start out with a simple Makefile. Only sometimes do I start with or eventually switch to something else because of the projects’ needs, but for most stuff (even stuff where the project itself is complex, i.e. embedded kernel stuff where different units are pasted together and whatnot), relatively simple Makefiles do their job pretty well.

I also have a lot of phony targets. It really enjoy just being able to type:

   make restore kernel reset upload

To bring a device into a sane state, build the kernel, reset the device, and upload the built firmware.