You have a valid reason for not using Zapier today because you know how to write code (though some still do).

The majority of Zapier users are not engineers. They can't make that trade-off decision. Their trade-off is instead "should I use Zapier or just not do X at all?"

I'd guess many of Panic board's users chose the latter (not do X at all) given they cited lack of integrations as one reason for shutting down.