ugh. CMake is atrocious. It covers maybe .1% of the cases that autotools handles while having some of the worst documentation known to man. Not to mention yet another language to learn. It's not more "modern" than autotools and it's in no way shape or form "newer" than autotools, seeing that automake/autoconf have been in active development since inception.
Upvoted, and re: documentation, I will say that I enjoyed the print book[0] when I was reading it years ago. Your comment re: quarter-assed BASIC... is about what I was thinking when I wrote https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9283016 -- a big missed opportunity.