It's basically a set of tools to make building native modules easier, that said modules then use to deal with their binding to C/C++/etc. code.

Everybody complains about it, and understandably so, but if it didn't exist you'd probably instead have one set of potential similar problems *per* native module which has a good chance of not actually being better overall.

The counterargument is, I guess, "well, only people who can write their own high quality build setup in-tree should be writing things that bind to external code," and I do sometimes dream of that, but it's not hard to see the downsides of living in *that* world instead either.