I used make as a task runner for probably 30 years; using all the tricks to do most of the things you want in that use case (arguments, help, portability, reliability..). I worked around all the idiosyncracies continually. That's enough time sunk into wasteful friction for me. Now just is here, and the people pushing it are right. For this job (task/script manager for more than trivial commands) it's better enough and reduces cognitive load enough that it's very often worth the install requirement and new learning curve. In time it will be more installed-by-default and I'm certain it'll acquire some form of make-like dependent building as well.

[Apologies for contributing to the slightly off topic discussion. makext sounds great for people still using make for this and I totally would have used it in the past.]