Ask HN: Are there any shortcuts in web development?

Hey HN, I'm a web developer and feel like no matter how hard I try I can only get myself to publish 1-2 apps/years of fairly trivial quality/scope.

Maybe I just have rose tinted glasses on, but I feel like it was easier to ship simple apps by using things like Flash that lets you do drag & drop editing to get your 90% of the way there.

I'm a fairly newbie web developer, so I feel like I have lots of room to grow in terms of learning about underlying browser APIs I could tap into, and am familiar with React. But nonetheless, are you aware of any frameworks, techniques, patterns, mental perspectives that would help develop simple UIs in less time?