I've worked on a few projects that apply this pattern of using a Makefile to define and run imperative commands. A few people develop the pattern independently, then it gets proliferated through the company as part of the boilerplate into new repositories. It's not a terrible pattern, it's just a bit strange.

For many junior colleagues, this pattern is the first time they've ever encountered make -- hijacked as some kind of imperative command runner.

It's quite rare to run into someone who is aware that make can be used to define rules for producing files from other files.

I find it all a bit odd. Of course, no-one is born knowing about middle-aged build tools.