I'm a solo dev, paying $550 AUD a month for a permanent desk at a great open plan tech community space. It's in an inner city suburb (Richmond) which is the tech hub of Melbourne, Australia.
I live about 22K out of town, in the green wedge with lots of trees. I like how I am still physically connected each day to the vibrant Melbourne tech community, but can come home to the family and be in a more open, natural space. I am so much more productive when I am in the office and it works well, when meeting clients, to have an address in town.
> HTML is for devs. They're the ones that deal with it.
As devs, we can view this html through a browser and use in-browser dev tools to view the associated CSS. There's no need to explain the style in the HTML.
I think it's more likely that the low barrier to entry required to build a WP site is what has caused these issues, well, in the past, anyway.
What you are describing could be attributed to any poor quality code, it's not specifically WP core that is to blame, but rather poor quality code built on top of it.
In regards to managing WP sites being costly and taking up time, I manage many WP client sites and find the opposite to be true (I did write the code for all of them, though)
What about people who want to cook in their kitchen and eat with their family? I think you may be looking at this too logically, not taking into account the emotional part of preparing and eating food.