I have a theory that hindsight isn't even 20/20 when it comes to the web. Hindsight is still 20/400 because we STILL do not know what is the best language & framework. Frontends evolved quarterly with new paradigms popping up at a breakneck pace.

There is a reason why we have knockout, ts, angular, react, vue, and even people touting their own NEW frameworks in this very thread: we still don't know WTF we are doing!

I don't think it is a bad thing, I think we're in the Cambrian Explosion of web development, and will be for decades until the hardware slows down its rapid evolution.

I was there when Mosaic first appeared in /usr/bin during grad school. We had no clue where things were headed then, so I find it a bit harsh to diss on the first devs.