make isn't even that good a build system... any system that requires that you create your own "clean" step(s) is wrong IMHO. A good build system is aware of the intermediate and final artifacts produced and knows what artifacts need to be created when changes are made [0].

That being said, javascript build systems just repeat the mistakes made by make, instead of learning from those mistakes.

[0] http://gittup.org/tup/build_system_rules_and_algorithms.pdf