./configure&&make exists because these "large projects" are non-portable without it.
C allows you plenty of non-portable code that makes these files huge(i've seen makefiles and configure scripts in the 2MB+ range).
Java Ant is another horror from beyond that requires entire JVM to process "portable" Java(that supposed to "run everywhere" without such thing as makefiles).
https://ant.apache.org/ "Soon thereafter, several open source Java projects realized that Ant could solve the problems they had with Makefiles. Starting with the projects hosted at Jakarta and the old Java Apache project, Ant spread like a virus and is now the build tool of choice for a lot of projects."