The problem is when people try to expand them to everything, and they end up some arcane file full of junk nobody understands. What is a phony target anyways? And even if you understand the concept, realize it makes no sense to passerby.
This is an entry level bar to the profession, one level below that will be an insult to anyone who calls themselves an engineer.
If you can't be bothered to learn the basics of the language, your criticism isn't going to be worth much.
Not sure how the two relate at all. One is a statement terminator, the other a rather complex system.
> If you can't be bothered to learn the basics of the language, your criticism isn't going to be worth much.
That's the entire point! Remember my complaint is not against Make as a build tool, but Make as a do everything(including deploy) system. There are countless options in the space. With most, you can generally open a config file or even bash script and figure out what's going on. Not so with Make, without learning as you call it. It's nonobvious. And I say that as someone who -does- understand it.