[rprospero]

I interpreted the comment a bit more generously. The admonition wasn't to avoid using higher level tools, but not to try editing the low level output of a high level tool. I prefer writing in C to writing in assembler, but I would never want to modify the assembler produced by a compiler. Similarly, I prefer scheme to C, but I would prefer handwritten C to editing the output of the Chicken-to-C compiler.

That comes back to the complaint about the auto-build tools. Using the tools, by themselves, is perfectly reasonable. On the other hand, writing Makefiles by hand isn't particularly onerous. What is frustrating, however, is when I'm expected to edit a Makefile that was generated by a tool without having access to the script that generated said Makefile.

[btilly]

I've seen cases where the low level output is perfectly reasonable. And other cases where the low level output contains a section explicitly meant so that people can insert into it. And other cases where it is unreasonable.

That said, if you find autogenerated "stuff", that is not evidence you can't work on the project. It is evidence that you need to understand something before doing so.