Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

> but it works

That it what a lot of SW developers forget: your code might be the best in the world, but , if someone is not able to build it, it is useless.



I remember countless times me and forum fellas debugging makefiles written under developers’ assumptions about systems. That is also what lots of developers forget or simply aren’t aware of.

Make isn’t a silver bullet for builds. It isn’t even a bullet. Most software gets built from scratch and make’s deps graph makes little to zero sense in this mode. Make is a quirky poor dev tool footgun, jack of all trades master of none.


Make leaves the actual hard problem behind — setting up the environment correctly. A README file is much more useful.




Consider applying for YC's Winter 2026 batch! Applications are open till Nov 10

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: