[jeswin]

I agree mostly. But when you're in the node ecosystem, often times you need to run JS as part of the build. For example, you might need to create some JSON data as part of the build.

I ended up writing my own build library (npm install crankshaft). Docs aren't up yet, but here's what build scripts look like - https://github.com/jeswin/hitchslap/blob/master/build.js (simple example) and https://github.com/jeswin/fora/blob/master/www-client/build-... (more complex, with dependent tasks)