> the benefit of coding without a build step is to the community

Programmers don't necessarily want things to be easy. It thwarts the ability to practice resume-driven development and extract money from consulting schemes* and/or draw salaries where a substantial part of the worker's dayjob is in dealing with stuff that isn't strictly necessary (or even a good idea to start with). To frame it another way, high barriers to entry are virtually synonymous with better job security whereas lower barriers lead to increased competition in the job market.

* This is more in the realm of "emergent phenomena" and "revealed preference" than it is conscious scheming, but it's not any less real.