Why are offices so terrible?

I work as a programer and have worked in high cube, low cube, open offices and coworking spaces. They all had pros and cons but I saw what was and wasn't liked differed by the job position; sales and marketing liked open offices more while people coding prefered separation.

In open office environments (which were pitched as awesome and 'the latest') they spent a lot of time figuring out how to best separate people who spent their day on the phone or talking from those that needed concentration. It would have been easier IMO to give each department what was best for those people but the upfront cost of planning and buying different supplies was deemed to high.

The argument that a non-homogeneous office layout made the space less modular was a good one that I didn't have a counter for.