I would agree and would go as far to say that dress in general should never be a hiring criteria for a non-customer facing position. Unless there are hygiene issues or they are wearing something actively offensive.
In a lot of my engineering roles I have had to be internal/external facing and do things like budget presentations, work with partners, etc. Before that, I was a general web/app dev and we would get pulled along to client meetings all the time to collect spec, ensure that it was a good sales fit, etc. I'm not saying I had to be fully decked-out but being able to throw on a button down and tuck it in means that you "fit-in" to these situations.
For me, if someone is showing up in a t-shirt and jeans it's a red flag that you can't be bothered to dress semi-professionally which has been an occasional (but hard) requirement of me since day-1 of my career. 100% this all is anecdotal, and specific to my own needs/experiences.
Dress code doesn't really factor for me, but I've worked for the same place for a while now and we've always been 95% remote. Half of us just wear whatever we slept in the night before. Most people don't get dressed until lunch time. Even in the office it doesn't get much fancier than a t-shirt and jeans. I guess our tech lead wears a button down shirt, but his jeans usually have giant holes in them, so I would call that a wash.
Expecting an interview candidate to wear something nice would feel a bit hypocritical.
Unfortunately, our industry has no such thing, so I always ask before an interview. So far the answer is always "uh, we just wear normal clothes", "casual is fine" or once "just wear clothes, please, this isn't quite Burning Man" (ended up working at the last place), but: this was in the Bay Area, so YMMV.
It seems to me that you're making an assumption about what is considered professional dress. I feel like it's fine to have such expectations, but you should express them clearly in the invitation to interview. It's not a case of "not bothering" if you have never expressed that preference in the first place.