I think so, but it's personal opinion.

I wear glasses and 25" at 1440p has very clear text. I feel no strain. Even the grey text on HN is very readable from about 32" (81 cm) away which is my normal viewing distance. It's readable without much strain from 45" (114 cm) but I wouldn't want to use things that far away.

For reference my work issued laptop is a 13" 2020 MBP so I have experienced retina. I would take the 1440p screen real estate at ~120 PPI (24"/25") 10 out of 10 times vs going back to 1080p but with higher PPI. There's also the added benefit of never having to think or worry about poor UI scaling since not all apps handle scaling well, but that's not a deciding factor in my mind, more of a nice to have.

Then probably this is the reason.

I never need to run app and editor side by side on same screen. I always have 2+ screen in any setup. So I just threw it to another if I want ever want to run it side by side. And besides, I seldom codes with my 27 4K screens.

They ares used mostly on browsing web/gaming. which you can't use something side by side isn't even a issue.

Yes, for developers screen real estate is everything. You want crisp fonts and lots of space. Both for just code editing and of course for testing, where you often run your application side by side with your code window. At work I still use my old 30" 2560x1600 screen (basically the old cinema display) and its just gorgeous. My iMac is way sharper, that is also great for image processing, but already noticeable smaller. You can squeeze a bit more onto the screen due to the higher resolution. My 24" 4k screen works with a scaled resolution (2300 horizontal resolution) but its considerably worse. A hidpi 30" screen would be a dream.