I have 99 problems with software engineering, but what you are talking about ain't one.
Although I have to admit that interacting with a loser who thinks that emulating technology over half century old to manage his system is somehow The Right Thing can be quite unpleasant. My advice would be to stop hanging out with the wrong crowd.
As for what you said, here is my take - software minimalism as you put it is really just a mix of delusion, laziness, and lack of skill. As old adage says, the final 20% of a program requires 80% of the work. Not everybody is willing to go that extra mile, but also not everybody is willing to admit it. An easy way to protect a fragile ego.
This is something that I've seen in the ``rewrite it in Rust'' crowd. There was a project going, to rewrite Emacs in Rust. From what I understand, they did the easy parts, and when they were left with difficult parts, they hid behind the fact that they were ``unpaid volunteers'' and they could definitely ``figure it out'' if they were paid. 135 thousand commits and tons of excuses later, the software doesn't seem to even build anymore. They still pat themselves on the back.