[tacostakohashi]

I've used make a lot over the years for automation of tasks like fetching lots of large remote files and converting between formats (compressing / uncompressing, image file format conversion).

Any time you have a task with lots of smaller steps that takes several minutes or more to complete from end to end, getting built-in parallelization (-j), error handling, and resuming efficiently from a partially complete state for free with make becomes worthwhile.