Past GUI/CRUD Productivity Lessons Lost?

Back in the 1990's we had GUI CRUD-building tools like PowerBuilder, Paradox, Clarion, Delphi, etc. that made building in-house and biz-to-biz applications easy to learn, use, and intuitive. They had glitches, but got better over time. The "web stacks" ruined all that, and now we have Dagwood sandwiches with lots of components and layers. I felt more productive focusing on business logic (customer needs) than dealing with dodgy scroll-bars, ORM's that produce bad SQL, or JS libraries that don't work with the latest browser version, etc. It seems we de-evolved. I miss being productive.

The new stacks often come with code generators, sometimes called "scaffolding", which can take care of a lot of the grunt-work for you; BUT if something goes wrong, you have meandering dark-grey boxes to debug. As time goes on, each part starts to rot (become obsolete) and the people who built these layers move on, leaving somebody with a mess.

Is there no way to get back to the simplicity of the 90's? What Laws of Nature/Math/Physics exist that force it to be overly complicated? I'd like to see logical proof we are stuck with the current mess; don't just claim I'm a geezer who won't move on.

Do we need more state-full network-GUI standards that sideline JS/DOM? I realize we have mobile devices, but I'm not sure if that's the bottleneck. If we sacrifice chasing the latest aesthetic fad and focus on utility, maybe we can simplify the CRUD/GUI stack. The X Window System with more network latency support, such as client-side input boxes, is an idea. If we move most of the rendering complexity to the server, we don't have to worry as much about myriads of client (browser) versions and brands. Yes, it's the Thin Client dream again. Don't kill it just because it's not sexy. Think of it like an accountant: not attractive, but you need one.