It's not so important until it turns out it is. Say, because the project, while initially small, has grown to a size that demands using abstraction. Or because, while the original programmer unwittingly reimplemented the same patterns over and over, the next programmer is less willing to put up with so much duplication.
Every attempt to lower the craft of programming to the level of those who aren't willing to learn it has resulted has resulted in:
(0) An eventual admission that this approach doesn't work, e.g., how JavaScript was originally supposed to be easy for non-programmers to learn, but eventually grew programming patterns and practices that require programming knowledge to understand and put into practice, while keeping the gotchas and rough edges that were supposed not to matter.
(1) Half-assed attempts to retrofit means of abstraction into languages with too much bad legacy code, e.g., generics in Java or modules in JavaScript.
(2) Yet another attempt to lower the craft of programming, this time by someone else. Loop.