That’s exactly what it feels like. A word processor distorted into an application development platform. With nearly 30 years of technical debt as well.

This is becoming untenable. The web has only gotten more and more difficult for novice users and developers alike to publish onto. That spells doom for the web in the long run.

I wish we had a clear path out of this trap.

I know exactly what you’re talking about from when I transitioned to web dev, but I feel that much less these days with TypeScript (done well) and VS Code. It’s actually a pretty decent experience even if it does feel like a bit of a facade over the top. Once you’ve got all your setup and dependencies sorted of course…

Same here, that is why when coding Web apps, I gladly take the back seat, and although I tend to rant about WebAssembly, I am grateful for it bringing Flash like development back.