If A Robot Makes Your Makefile

If a robot makes your Makefile, it is no better than pressing that magic green arrow at the top of an IDE and watching the project compile.

LIST=CPU
ifndef RECURSE
RECURSE=recurse.mk
ifdef CONFIG
RDIR=$(dir $(CONFIG))
endif
endif
include settings.mk
include $(RDIR)$(RECURSE)

While a robot may easily understand this, it isn't any better than using g++ by hand.

Makefiles, in this programmer's humble opinion, should be clean, elegant, and easy to understand. They are the easiest way to immediately jump in to a project and figure out what is important and the way it is structured.
Even more importantly, they can point to dead ends and code that is never actually accessed by the program, keeping wasted days at bay.