This isn't new, CoffeeScript has included this for a while.
One thing to keep in mind is that Cake is tiny, the complete source shouldn't take more than a minute or 2 to read and understand[1] and is a nice example of CoffeeScript style.
One thing to keep in mind is that Cake is tiny, the complete source shouldn't take more than a minute or 2 to read and understand[1] and is a nice example of CoffeeScript style.
Which allows me to pronounce that It's tiny because it's limited. What happens when the project bumps up against those limitations (parallel builds would be nice, or maybe default rules, or the ability to invoke and export environment variables to subprocesses, or...)? Will they abandon cake and move to a build system that already meets their more advanced needs?
Hell no. They'll add features. So the cake of 2019 will, assuming a still-robust coffeescript community, look a lot more like rake or ant or scons or cmake. It won't be tiny. It won't be easy to read. It will be yet another ridiculous build system.
[1] https://github.com/jashkenas/coffee-script/commits/master/sr...
Which you will be free not to use. Along with not using Coffeescript.