One thing I appreciate about the javascript ecosystem and "scripts" is the focus on keeping everything contained in the project. The only assumption about the system is that it has node, from there it's npm i, npm start. Scripts are a way to make sure people always run the project-local version of various development tools and not whatever they happen to have installed.

When I see a makefile, I expect they will be making more assumptions about my system and expect a little more work.

I do appreciate the "has worked fine for decades" aspect of makefiles, and I guess docker solves some of this, but I still prefer a fully self contained javascript project.