The problem is that many modern frameworks are developed by massive tech companies for massive tech companies. They need the million rows, so the frameworks are optimized for that. Many developers choose those frameworks to be cool. Also learning abut those frameworks helps in the next jobs and managers love to copy the "cool" big tech companies. The simple truth is that for many projects a monolith with a simpler framework is enough to handle the load and those are around too. For desktop it becomes even easier, as a bunch of old frameworks are still under development and work perfectly well.