I wouldn't say it causes more problems than it solves. It inconveniences a relatively small number of people (developers) while eliminating an annoyance for millions of users.

The service ultimately exists to cater to users, not to developers who want to automate something on top of an interface primarily meant for users.

Also, it's not like there's no way for a developer to figure out if something can be automated without a captcha to guide them. The first time they try to do it, they'll run into an error that tells them they can't, and that'll be that.