I really don't understand the appeal of dbt vs a proper programming language. The templating approach leads to massive spaghetti. I look forward to trying out something like Ibis [0]
You might not get the appeal of dbt because it is not meant for you. Dbt was made for data analyst who wanted the same engineering practices that software engineering teams have. The people who use it may have Python experience but they are not software engineers so dbt introduces concepts like testing and CI/CD to a group of people who don't historically use them.