> When I look at a tool like Gulp, I wonder if its success is largely attributable to people not bothering to learn how Makefiles work.

> This complexity cost shows itself when the system breaks (and it will - all systems break) and you have to dive into these overengineered tools. Don’t forget that dependencies are fallible, and never add a dependency you wouldn’t feel comfortable debugging.

I don't have a lot of experience with Makefiles, but I refuse to believe that they're being cited as an example of something that's not complex.

It seems like this blog post is basically the author saying, "I understand how Makefiles work, but don't understand how Gulp works", and extrapolating that everyone else shares his skillset.