I have the same background (25 years of C and C++), and tried the same thing: Let's learn web programming by putting together a 700 line web app that allows you to edit, load, and save some proprietary file format. Sounds like a good learning project. How hard could it be? I'll use this JQuery thing, that looks popular. I guess I need HTML, CSS, and JS, not sure what should go in which file, but I'll learn it as I go.

But nothing has as thorough documentation as I'm used to in native / systems programming. It's all rando tutorials and incomplete/outdated web pages.

Weeks later, I have something barely working, but it looks ugly as sin because there is no nice, well-documented GUI library like Qt, wxWidgets, and so on. And the ones that are decent would require me to rewrite my whole app around them. I find JQueryUI which is still at the level of banging rocks together to create fire. In fact, the whole process of putting a web app together feels like I'm using stone tools and blunt chisels instead of the C++ workshop full of power tools and well-lit workbenches.

I don't know how developers can live with this pain. Good for y'all--I couldn't do it day in and day out.