I think you did the right choice, but not everyone wants to take the longer route, so this is why n8n exists!

I think using this without programming knowledge is hard, you'll hit a lot of errors and data transformation issues that are hard to solve without knowing programming 101 like arrays, objects, data access, etc.

But, if you do know how to code, this makes it easy to quickly integrate stuff without having to write all the connection boilerplate code.

I'm a developer but use N8N. One reason is not having to build and maintain integrations with lots of API:s for workflows that are just run once in a while. Like building an integration with Slack that will get data from 5 API:s and save it in google sheets and send you an email.

That would require writing lots of code while here it is much easier with N8N. Anything complicated or needing lots of useage I would go for programming