I agree it's gotten too complicated. In my mind, the evolution has gone like this: 1) Plain HTML/CSS, built using desktop tools like FrontPage/Dreamweaver 2)

I agree it's gotten too complicated. In my mind, the evolution has gone like this: 1) Plain HTML/CSS, built using desktop tools like FrontPage/Dreamweaver 2) Server-side scripts (CGI/ASP/ColdFusion) to dynamically generate HTML/CSS. Javascript or VBScript for "Dynamic HTML". 3) Javascript wins, VBScript dies. Javascript idiosyncratic between browsers. Flash fills niche for dynamic client UX that generally works on most browsers. 4) iPhone happens. Safari won't support flash. Devices that do support flash or a subset have terrible battery life. 5) Javascript has matured. jQuery patches remaining cross-browser issues. 6) Server-side frameworks like ASP.NET, Ruby, PHP, NodeJS mature. 7) JS further matures. cross-browser without jQuery feasible, but binding to JSON is still clunky. Frameworks like Angular, Vue help with databinding and other common problems developing JS/CSS/HTML clients. 8) If you solve enough problems, you end up with a framework to build a complete client, transpiled from various languages (TypeScript, SASS/LESS, some markup). Angular, Vue, React, and other SPA frameworks evolve further. 9) Some UX/SEO/perf issues with SPA approach. SPA frameworks evolve to support server-side rendering. 10) Static sites generated by frameworks reduce the need for server at runtime. Build the site and host on cheap CDNs ...and this is where we are now. As someone more used to ASP.NET + Vue/Angular, I'm still having a hard time transitioning to server-side rendering, WebPack, etc. It just feels like too much ceremony and too many dependencies. I think the industry is waiting for some solution that is low-dependency, widely adopted, open. I haven't found my perfect platform yet, but feel it looks like this: Put a few files in source control and very easily spin up sites that look ok by default but are easy to customize. It supports building sortable/filterable grids,lists, and forms against some server API (REST/GraphQL/etc) with minimal code and and simplifies auth. It also has a rich ecosystem of components.