Here are some things to keep in mind: HTML5 is responsive and semantic by default. If you work with it rather than against it, you'll have incredibly rich docu

Here are some things to keep in mind: HTML5 is responsive and semantic by default. If you work with it rather than against it, you'll have incredibly rich documents that support users very well on a wide variety of different devices at no additional effort on your behalf. If you stick to only enough CSS3 as to actually style HTML5, not redefine it, then CSS is extremely easy to maintain, too. ES5 is implemented in all major browsers and its simple parts are very simple to learn. OOP and FP vie for the hearts and minds of developers with terrifying sparks and flames, but we've built entire empires off of procedural programming. Your choice of programming paradigm will likely have zero impact on your project's success. All of the difficulty we have is when we try to buck these strengths. You don't need a task runner if you aren't running tasks to translate Haml and SCSS and CoffeeScript to HTML5 and CSS3 and ES5. I'm not saying there isn't value in doing those things. I have my own convoluted process that I am constantly tweaking. But they are by far not the default. If you want to say that Web development is inherently complicated, you must talk about what is at its core. And the core of HTML5/CSS3/ES5 is not complicated. You can write it with a plain text editor. You can load it in any browser. You can serve it from any web server in their default settings. We fundamentally choose to complicate these things.