
People often judge things by the skill and effort that went into making them. For example, hand-made things a valued, even when a laser/CNC/molding can make an objectively better item.
That's usually fine, except I think some of this affects how we judge software. Difficult-to-use tools/languages, projects that took a lot of pain to develop, clever hard-to-maintain algorithms — they take a lot of skill and effort, but may be overvalued compared to easy/lazy/automatic solutions.