I can see from a new developer point of view, their frustration. Why aren’t things standard? Why not use builtin tags? Why this or that?

Valid questions we should all be asking. Sometimes, just because “that’s the way it was” doesn’t mean that’s the way it should be. Often times I find myself deleting code that is now more readily available as either part of the platform I’m on or part of the framework I’m using.

Your points are valid too, that they don’t know about the history that got us here and why it is the way it is but nevertheless we should all be asking ourselves daily, “do we still need this?” and trim the fat.