why is does it feel like the world of "what people and businesses are paying for today to lower the barrier to entry for computational needs" is an almost non-intersecting set with "what excites us about lowering the barrier to entry for computational needs"?

The main mistake they’re all making is to treat the user as too dumb. What the user wants is an end-user programming tool about as complex (and sophisticated!) as Excel. Not these paint-by-numbers monstrosities that look they’re intended for a 10 year old audience. Nothing wrong with a 10 year old audience, of course. But business users can handle more. And a really successful tool will provide it.

@Arvind Thyagarajan I'll widen your question to "why are so many bad decisions taken in the world?", with "bad" in some semi-objective sense (so not just "opposite to my opinion"). My answer is: hubris. There are too many people who believe to know the Right Answer to complex questions and don't bother to check.

A quote that sums up the straitjacket feeling of so many of those tools: “Unix was not designed to stop you from doing stupid things, because that would also stop you from doing clever things.” — Doug Gwyn