I was just thinking about the 'full circle' today.

OSes of the past: Windows, Variations of Unix's,

OSes of 2018: Android, IOS, All Varations of Browsers, plus all the old ones

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Cross platform (cross-os) development of the past: nasty (Widget libraries (wxWindows, QT, ... ), os-abstraction libs )

Cross platform development of 2018: nasty still (react-native, xamarin, etc .. )

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Development pipeline tools of the past: Automake/cmake, make, linker

Development pipeline tools of 2018: npm, webpack

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Compiler front ends of the past (things that produce assembler or low-level C or stack-machine codes): various C++ front ends, Eifel, etc

Compiler front ends of 2018 (things that spit out javascript): babel (more like macro-assembler), Clojurescript, ReasonML, Fay, Nim .. ,etc

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In current times, we also added Wireframe/Styling tools into our development pipeline (I do not think we had it in the past). Eg Bootstrap and other styling (that are not integrated into 'compile-time-verification' stage of the modern Front-end languages.

I realize that above is somewhat front-end-dev oriented, but I think the desire to share 'same language' for front and backend development, causes the blur.

I also would add that for data crunching and data distribution (eg CORBA, DRPC) of the past -- we have gained more options, higher quality and free. So I would say this is a material advance for our productivity.

Your phrase is broken. You can easily compare apples to oranges.

Sure. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apples_and_oranges

I know about the phrase I just felt like giving an equally vague answer to your comment.

To stay on topic what makes you think that the comparison is flawed?

What makes webpack uncomparable to make?

How can android / browsers not be compared to windows / linux?

Why can't make be used to pack web applications?

...

The difference being that Make is actually usable.

For the silent down-voters: Tell me why the above statement is not true.

It's a punctuation heavy format with a bunch of shell code mixed in, which means projects go from using one language (Python, Ruby, JavaScript etc) to three (whatever they were using previously plus Make plus shell).

Because you imply that Webpack isn't. It gives you much more that with make you still have to invent.

The newer versions of WP is surprisingly simple to set up.

It's 100% true.

I've been using Make for 15 years across multiple programming languages. It's a small, dependable, and simple utility.

I've been painfully slogging through Webpack configs for 4 years. I dread dealing with it every single time I open the file.

If only Makefiles were usable. tabs vs space...