I've seen the same trend in other recent fonts designed for programming, like JetBrains Mono, with the idea that "more height" on lowercase letters improves leg

I've seen the same trend in other recent fonts designed for programming, like JetBrains Mono, with the idea that "more height" on lowercase letters improves legibility at small font sizes. I'm in agreement with your distaste, mostly because I work on high-DPI displays where legibility is not necessarily an issue and fonts that do this look like a "blob" of text.