It kind of makes the whole article irrelevant. Like a house of cards that is build on a foundation of Make, but when you get to the bottom there are no actual Makefiles there.
It just means when the article was published, the need was real and make was useful. Context matters.
Based on that commit they don't need to download the data to generate the .json file, so they don't, Make became irrelevant. If anything this shows that a tool can be really useful but you don't need to marry it. Don't use if you don't have to.
In the package.json of that commit:
> - "description": "Roll your own TopoJSON from Natural Earth.",
> + "description": "Pre-built TopoJSON from Natural Earth.",