The article explores strategies for optimizing build systems, emphasizing the importance of build repeatability and maintainability to enhance productivity in software engineering. It discusses using tools like Makefiles, Dockerfiles, and Bash scripts to create efficient and reproducible build processes, with a focus on the glue layer that integrates various components. The text offers tips for managing complexity in Makefiles, using Docker's multi-stage builds, running containerized tests, and outputting files efficiently. Additionally, it addresses challenges like parallelism, shared caching, and managing secrets, stressing the need for consistent build practices across teams to facilitate collaboration. The article also introduces Earthly, a tool designed to simplify containerized builds by merging the best elements of Dockerfiles and Makefiles into a user-friendly syntax.