It's simpler. The verbosity, the line of code count, is what has gotten people excited about it. So everyone optimizes for verbosity.
This does not strike me as true at all. Nobody's crowing about the verbosity of their AI-generated code. Rather, it seems to me they're impressed by the functionality or capabilities relative to time/cost.
10 lines of checks per line of actual execution. Anxiety for their stable pay
Of course. Those 10 lines of extra code is that much more tokens every time your agents read and use that section of code. The more blot in the project to more tokens your agents will burn.