I was on the "just use makefiles" boat way too long, except it was Just at the time that was calling for my attention. At first glance, they look similar. Make's already there, so what's the big deal?

And then I use Just for a week and become a diehard fan. Yeah, it's similar to make, except optimized for developer ergonomics instead of feature completeness. What if... the tool actually supported and encouraged you instead of making you fight it?

Later I came to prefer mise over just. It does more common developer stuff like managing tools and env vars, and I prefer the way it handles embedded scripts. In any case, I vastly prefer either of them to make for the kinds of languages I mostly use.

Even if I did prefer make, which one? The GNU make that ships with macOS is ancient, so I'd probably have to install a newer one, and if I'm going to have to install a tool anyone, might as well make the effort to make that tool be mise (or just or just about anything else).