I think the main idea here is wrong. There is nothing wrong with technologies that require significant experience to master; the issue is with technologies that

I think the main idea here is wrong. There is nothing wrong with technologies that require significant experience to master; the issue is with technologies that require significant experience but are still inefficient. Plenty of the best tools are moderately difficult to learn: Emacs, Vi, the command line, Linux, Haskell...etc. However, once you learn them well, you become more efficient than you could be on a tool that's easier to learn. And this is good: sacrificing a bit of extra time to learn a technology that will make you more efficient is usually a good trade because learning takes a constant amount of time while being more efficient is at least linear. The real issue is with tools that are arbitrarily complex. The DOM is a great example: its poor API, browser inconsistencies, weird layout rules...etc do not help you, but are difficult to learn and use. So the real issue is that the parts that are difficult to learn present no advantages over a simpler, easier to learn version.