Hard and intimidating doesn’t necessarily mean interesting, I think a lot of the bias against web dev is hovering in the latter and not the former. Note, I’m not saying that web dev isn’t interesting, just that the common perception against it is rooted in interest rather challenge (like it was for database in the decades before).

More to the point, why would people want to work in a hard and intimidating area anyways? If it was fun and interesting, it might be challenging but not intimidating. Again, I’m not making judgements in web dev, just on how biased perceptions go.