Ignoring that this post reads like ex post facto justification, programming is communication. I could write a missive about why I write in English instead of Chinese and say something like 'English has fewer characters' and 'English is supported by more fonts' but the truth of the matter is that it really comes down to who and what I'm working with.

If you're writing Makefiles for a React app, for example, you're very likely doing something wrong. Even for NodeJS the standard is gyp.