> I don't quite understand why one would waste so much resources and compute to expand some lazily conceived half-sentence into 10 paragraphs, as if it scores them some points.

Because it does. The goal here isn't to create good code, it's to create an impression of a person who writes good code. Even now, when software career is in freefall, for many people in poor countries it's still their only way out of poverty so they'll try everything possible to build a portfolio and get a job and the suffering of your little pet project isn't a part of the equation. Those people aren't trying to get Nobel prizes, they're trying to get any job that isn't farming with literal medieval-era technology.

My very radical personal opinion is that either we have small elitist circles of trust, or the internet will remain a global ghetto.