So, having had to edit both VS *.*proj files and Makefiles manually, I'd say that Makefiles are orders of magnitude more approachable and easier for me. MSBuild is just a giant PITA in my experience. Though I agree that I don't find Makefiles enjoyable either :D, but at least I can more easily track changes to them in VCS.
FYI, Visual Studio has native support for CMake projects these days.
-- /Jacob Carlborg
