Modern web dev is fantastically more productive and efficient than it was 10 or 15 years ago.
Most/many SAAS apps are substitutes for aspects of what previously would have been part of a developers job to put into place.
I have to disagree. The esthetical expectations of the user/customer are higher now. If it's not "in style" they think you are sticking them with old tech. And you have the desktop/mobile split that frameworks only get half right and require days of black-box fiddling to get working right on all devices. And JavaScript gizmos often "break" as new browser versions or related components come out. It's almost as bad as the "DLL hell" that desktop applications used to face.
From a purely utility standpoint, I was much more productive back then because I only had to make it work and be easy to use, not "pretty" and animated with toys or the latest style fad.
Is that even true? Is there any survey showing that users consider those bad or old tech? Because with things like the reddit, ebay, paypal, gmail redesign, the common thing i ve noticed is that nobody asked for those.
As far as old-looking sites like Ebay, if an Ebay competitor appeared with equivalent services and product choices, yet LOOKED fancier/stylish, Ebay would start to lose customers. Lucky for Ebay, no such site exists. (If they appeared, Ebay would probably spend on a visual revamp.)
And perhaps even then not so much: at a minimum you probably need to write unit tests.