I was a C/C# programmer coming to construct and I understand your pov... but honestly once you get more comfortable with Construct, everything is pretty quick to set up, speed is really its strong point.. I've never in the 9 years of using it felt the need (maybe a couple times but was more wish than a need) to have to make my own plugin.
larger systems will take some time to set up but that would be the case for any engine... unless you are making a lot of cookie-cutter systems for an assembly line of games you pretty much always do things different enough for the particular game you are making.
A thing I do to cut corners is create stand alone projects with everything setup.. then I transfer the objects to my current project and cut&paste the events.
I disagree that Construct caters to non-programmers, that's more a marketing line. It does however cater to solo-devs and smaller projects/teams. I say that as someone who TAUGHT construct to non-programmers for 5 years. I ALWAYS had to teach them programming in order for them to understand construct.