Plain text is the most readable because it can be stylized by each user's user agent to be comfortable for them. This was one of the killer features of the WWW

Plain text is the most readable because it can be stylized by each user's user agent to be comfortable for them. This was one of the killer features of the WWW which has increasingly been cast to the wayside (I guess because users are considered too incompetent to configure it?) Instead, we ought to be expanding this flexibility to other systems we use. In android I can swap out my launcher for something more ergonomic to me. Likewise on my linux box I can run whatever windowing environment strikes my fancy, the underlying content doesn't change. I don't use apple products or windows any more because these highly opinionated user interfaces are difficult or impossible to adapt and often change arbitrarily during updates. I guess the answer to why programmers "prefer" the bare-bones is that we understand how to go about adapting them to our needs and we don't like having our time wasted by the fickle aesthetics of random strangers.