That's the kind of programmers this industry attracts, and that's the kind of software it builds. What's so interesting about it? Why even bother mentioning these numerous java/C# jobs? My ex-wife with zero programming experience has trained herself in less than a month to run a simple SQL queries in Visual basic and blast results in a grid control on a form, so did thousands of ex-taxi drivers in late 90s. So?
To be honest, I'm still not sure what point you're trying to make is. At best it's somewhat of an Ad Hominem attack.
"People often write in higher level languages because they want lots of bad code fast."
Even if this is true, it's true only in enterprise software environment where code quality has never been terribly important. Therefore it can't really be an argument against higher level languages in the context of a typical HN discussion.
Makes sense?
I'm in no way trolling here, but if you think about it, most of the guys working on startups are also producing lots of bad code fast. The only difference is that most of them are aware of it, and will improve the code based on the requirements from the market.
If you are heavily into programming, as it seems you are, I can understand that SQL queries seem trivial and boring. If your interest is elsewhere programming is often just a tool used to create the interesting stuff. Whether that is usability, design, getting people to interact in new ways, launching rockets or automatically turning off your garden lights when your computer powers down.
Believe it or not there are interesting discussions to be had about other things than programming.
It just runs our banks, hospitals, governments... Much better to solely focus on those that write kernels, device drivers and filesystems?