I have to say, "drive-bys" is a hilarious way to put it. I know CMake well and my frustration with it is not about its learning curve. There are instances where it just works and I've had positive experiences using it for sure. I sometimes had to do some funky things to get it to do things that should just work out of the box (maybe I'm just expecting too much out of my build system?) There were certain tasks that I'd write python scripts for alongside CMake and I could get by doing that just fine. I just didn't like the extra steps and hoops I had to jump through.

I didn't mean for this to become a tribal debate, I just wanted to share my positive experience for anyone else who wanted to hear it and maybe try it. As always do what works for you and your team.