Religious

This comment is so right.

From my experience, controlling and limiting the UI has become a “religious thing” amongst young programmers who believe they know best and want to impose that on the rest of the world. The lame excuse I see most from the script-kiddies is “we don’t want to re-invent the wheel!” So they make the wheel square and claim it’s “betta’ than eva’!” and call it a day.

During the 90s — when programming such things was much harder than it is today — nearly every UI was configurable. That capability to configure hasn’t gone away for technical reasons or ease of coding for that is easier than ever now, but because of these religious views on UI.

As the culture at large has gotten more authoritarian, software developers have gone right along with that. They are swimming in the same stream after all.