Counterpoint: it's indispensable and nothing really fills the same niche.

I appreciate these brave words.

I agree that make is confusing at first but I don't think it should fall out of use. It's a great tool that I use everyday it is far simpler than its competitors once you get used to it. It is basically glorified bash scripting.

I agree, yet I also see no good universal alternative. Every language has a nice tool to do things in it's ecosystem, but the moment you need to coordinate two languages or go beyond simple stuff, make is the only good option.

This comment fits the spirit of the question better than anything else in here, I will say that.