Most of the decisions about the direction of UIs weren't made by "programmers" acting on their own but by companies - mostly Apple and Microsoft with Google and

Most of the decisions about the direction of UIs weren't made by "programmers" acting on their own but by companies - mostly Apple and Microsoft with Google and others involved at different points. I think the decisions were made for the same reasons companies like to dumb down everything - least common denominator is good for sales and dumbed-down means users have less power and are more dependent. Extra tragedy here is that people now live in software and so most people have to live in this stupidity.