You may be missing one thing "we" don't have to deal with that "they" most certainly do: insurance against bad programmers.
Lost of best practices, from the workflow methodologies you lampoon to the widespread use of (and reliance on) design patterns, only appear to exist to give bad programmers a way to contribute -- or at least to avoid them doing harm.
Lost of best practices, from the workflow methodologies you lampoon to the widespread use of (and reliance on) design patterns, only appear to exist to give bad programmers a way to contribute -- or at least to avoid them doing harm.