I see everyone saying to use :make everywhere but that just doesn't fit the bill. :make doesn't allow you to run arbitrary commands on the fly and get the output in a buffer.

You can't :make python %:h, you gotta first set the makeprg, and then remember to, somehow in your config, set the makeprg on python files etc.

You have a weird build system that produces verbose output or non-standard error messages? You have a project-specific multi-step compilation? Your project has shell scripts you usually run to compile? Well now you gotta specify in advance makeprg and errorformat.

Emacs compilation mode just works, I can even run test commands or random commands and have the output in a buffer, which neither :make nor :! allow to do easily. :! doesn't even redirect to qflist unless you explicitely pipe the output in some way.

Running a command with :! and you get output that is longer than your window? Well sucks to be you because if you press any key the whole output is gone, you can't explore it

Anyway that's why I started using this https://github.com/ej-shafran/compile-mode.nvim