To clarify, I guess what I'm saying is it's often mistaken that this complexity is somehow intrinsic or unavoidable to the craft, when in fact it's completely a

To clarify, I guess what I'm saying is it's often mistaken that this complexity is somehow intrinsic or unavoidable to the craft, when in fact it's completely avoidable. Bad (but popular) tooling isn't new --- I remember learning PHP4 was like an encyclopedia of gotchas and defensive programming --- but I feel that even a disaster like PHP4 was a lot more approachable for new coders than the state of the art now, and that the skills learned overcoming these things were more portable outside of the framework / language. All of this definitely makes my job more secure, but, I dunno, still feels like a real shame.