This is probably why the author is struggling. This is a real world industry tackling real world problems. It is not the neat and cut world of science research.
Its a testament to the awesomeness of the web however that so so many people even without any formal training can go about creating value.
You _can_ be a webdev tradesman, fixing things till it works, kinda, or you can delve into the fundamentals and be much more productive. But you don’t have to and I think thats awesome.
For example I still remember that conference that introduced Ruby on Rails to the world so many years ago. Most webdevs did not know there was an underlying theory and standard (REST) that can be used to make web apis bearable! After rails, we kinda figured huh, so this RFC for the web was sitting there all those years gathering dust and only weirdos and graybeards talked about it. But it was actually very very useful.
That last 1% actually have read the OG paper and when they say REST they mean REST and its real theory.
You had me up until this last sentence. Everything I've experienced in science research is the opposite of neat or clean cut. Actually, I think I do my best programming and debugging with a treat it like a science experiment.