But here's the thing: you didn't needed COM or ActiveX or MFC in many cases. You could literally wire up and build an up pretty effortlessly. With webdev today we jump directly to very complicated things when 90% of the time they are not needed.

For simple things we still have Excel and Ms Access where people continue to build simple UIs for personal use. At my previous job, our CFO build own framework (Excel) to manage and automate financial reports (which makes him a full-stack developer based on industry standards)

I guess the frustration comes from the fact that historically Web started as a set of static HTML files to create/publish documents and we inertially compare todays Web with it but we if stop comparing apples with oranges than it becomes apparent that:

1. It's never been simpler to create and publish web content 2. It's never been simpler to build/ship/and distribute software

Complexity arises when people (given many options) pick wrong tool for a job.

Picking the wrong tool but also cargo cults. If everyone is a X-developer and is using Y and you are working in X you start to wonder if you should be using Y, right?

My 15 year old Delphi program which runs the whole factory still hasnt been replaced, despite the company and IT staff growing by 10x. Its now taken 4 years, 3 IT Managers and 2 consulting firms to decide Delphi is archaic and it will all be re-written using "cloud and modern frameworks". They have given the team of 3 developers 2 years to do it. Considering they have not managed to keep a developer or IT Manager for longer than 18 months, I would say good luck. I really dont know how anyone gets anything done these days.