What's the real utility of make and ant?
ant, c, c++, java, makefile
Solution
Suppose you have 1000 source files and change just one of them. With your .bat script you will have to recompile the lot, with make you recompile just the one that changed. This can save quite a bit (read hours on a big project) of time.
Even better, if you change one of your header files, make will re-compile only the source files that use that header.
These are the two main features that have meant make and its offspring are used for all serious software development with compiled languages.
Problem
While i'm developing in C/C++ and Java, i simply make a compile.bat script that does everything, that's fine for me. Why should i use make and why should i use ant?