You can use make without configure. If needed, you can also write your own configure instead of using auto tools.
Creating a make file is about 10 lines and is the lowest friction for me to get programming of any environment. Familiarity is part of that.
It's a bit of a balance once you get bigger dependencies. A generic autoconf is annoying to write, but rarely an issue when packaging for a distro. Most issues I've had to fix in nixpkgs were for custom builds unfortunately.
But if you don't plan to distribute things widely (or have no deps).. Whatever, just do what works for you.
Write your own configure? For an internal project, where much is under domain control, sure. But for the 1000s of projects trying to multi-plarform and/or support flavours/versions - oh gosh.
It depends on how much platform specific stuff you are trying to use. Also in 2025 most packages are tailored for the operating system by packagers - not the original authors.
Autotools is going to check every config from the past 50 years.
>Also in 2025 most packages are tailored for the operating system by packagers - not the original authors.
No? Most operating systems don't have a separate packager. They have the developer package the application.
Yes? Each operating system is very different and almost every package has patches or separate install scripts.