Be Aware of the Makefile Effect

calling this "Makefile" effect is a terrible disservice. one could as easily call it "PHP" effect, "YAML" effect, etc. pick whichever language you'd personally like to denigrate.

there is nothing that makes makefiles inherently more or less susceptible to this. if it's more common, it's because people don't want to take the time doing more solid engineering and clean design for something like a ci/cd config or a makefile, being viewed as ancillary or less important. and so they often don't want to learn the language, so monkey-see-monkey-do.

as sibling comments state, this is better called cargo cult or maybe copy-pasta. and i've seen it with any language c, c++, python, scripts, config files, anything. i even see it in chat gpt answers because it's regurgitating someone else copy pasta.

if it's a problem, it's a problem of discipline.

But it sure makes it more memorable. I would’ve called it GitHub Actions effect.

The reason why it seems to apply to makefiles in particular is because most people think life is too short to bother learning and understanding makefiles so it seems to happen there more than anywhere else.

Also no matter how complicated and subtle you think your makefile is, true experts will tell you it's wrong and you instead copy their apparently over-engineered, hard to understand makefile

I think article addresses

> if it's a problem, it's a problem of discipline.

With this

> Also note: the title is “be aware,” not “beware.” The Makefile effect is not inherently bad!

> Also no matter how complicated and subtle you think your [thing] is, true experts will tell you it's wrong and you instead copy their apparently over-engineered, hard to understand [thing]

not unique at all to makefiles, probably not even in the top ten [things] that "true" experts like to "help" with