>>95992695
Short Rests are rooted in two things, the preexisting resting rules for dungeon crawls in D&D and its alikes, and per-encounter abilities.
In classic D&D you had to rest one game turn out of every six or become fatigued. This was the short rest. 10 minutes taking stock of your resources, having a small bit of your daily ration, etc. That was fine and dandy, and added to the tension of dungeon crawling.
The problem comes in when you add per encounter abilities, which started in late 3E but really became a thing in 4E. They weren't so bad there since 4E isn't D&D, it's Dragon Strike, a D&D side project for fantasy super-heroics. The moment 5E wanted to go back to the aesthetic power level of 3E without giving the mechanical power level of 4E, per encounter (or per short rest) abilities became a millstone that ruins the tension of dungeon crawling, and forced any setting that uses the system to be a very high magic world where every 3rd NPC casts spells of some sort.

tl;dr: No, but they are a response to something that is completely retarded.