Not really? A lot of build tools are chosen specifically to make the build process more reliable and understandable. For example, build tools like Maven handle dependency management, which is hugely beneficial in ensuring your builds are consistent and work the same in different environments. Makefiles are shell scripts.
Makefiles are definitely not shell scripts. Individual recipe lines are executed using Bash by default, but you can change this. (Heck you probably could even get away with Python if you really wanted.)
The rest of Make (which is 95% of what's in a Makefile) is its own language, which is actually not too bad for what it's intended for (munging around filenames), and has the flavor of a functional language.
Not taking sides here but you picked a bad example. Makefiles specifically handle dependency management, but designed from a compiled language perspective. Make sure you build this .so before you build this bin, or that this directory exists, and so forth.
That's fair, but it still reinforces the point: Makefiles are great from a compiled language perspective. Other build tools are better from other perspectives. It isn't wrong to choose a tool depending on your needs!
