Of course it "should just work", but so should everything else.

My car has an automatic transmission. My wife's has a manual. If I try to drive hers the way I drive mine, I'll destroy the engine by staying in first gear the whole trip. If I try to drive mine the way I drive hers, I'll be pounding on the left side of the brake pedal and messing stuff up every time I try to change gears and there isn't a clutch pedal there.

She has a Swiss Army knife, I have a locking-blade pocket knife. Again, try to use them the same way, and I'm liable to lose fingers (hers doesn't lock), or break the knife (mine doesn't have a bottle opener or screwdriver on it).

Shouldn't those things "just work"? Yep. But they don't. You have to use a tool the way it's designed. Some are going to be optimized for one thing, some for others.

I can do things with my knife, because of the locking blade, that wouldn't be safe with hers. I can do things with hers that wouldn't be possible with mine.

Surely pocket knives, perhaps the most ancient piece of technology on the planet, should be similar enough that specialized expertise with one would translate into specialized expertise with the other. Or they should "just work" well enough that one doesn't need specialized expertise with any knife. If you think that, then try doing with a fileting knife what you would do with a chisel, or vice versa.

So, why should software, which is just another tool, have some special "just workness" to it, that no other technology on this planet has? Specialization by tools and knowledge has always been humanity's greatest evolutionary advantage. Why would that have changed in the last 50 years? Different tools should have different strengths and weaknesses. Over time, these will evolve into the kind of true specializations that differentiate a jewler's mallet from a hydraulic press (both are hammers).

Sure, the differences now aren't that well-defined and don't have that kind of special utility, in some cases. But we are seeing some of it, a la, SQL Mobile vs SQL Enterprise. It just takes some time to really get there. Wheelbarrows vs 18-wheelers didn't happen in a decade or five.