Almost every build system (where I think it isn't controversial to say make is most often used) looks nice and simple with short, single-output examples to demonstrate the basis of a system.
It's when you start having hundreds of sources, targets, external dependencies, flags and special cases that it becomes hard to write sane, understandable Makefiles, which it presumably why people tend to use other systems to generate makefiles.
So sure, understanding what make is, and how it works is probably important, since it'll be around forever. But there are usually N better ways of expressing a build system, nowadays.
It's when you start having hundreds of sources, targets, external dependencies, flags and special cases that it becomes hard to write sane, understandable Makefiles, which it presumably why people tend to use other systems to generate makefiles.
So sure, understanding what make is, and how it works is probably important, since it'll be around forever. But there are usually N better ways of expressing a build system, nowadays.