As a 19 year old kid thats trying to learn web programming right now (After becoming reasonably proficient in java first), I can tell you first hand that there is a pretty big barrier to entry. It's frankly just hard to know what all the moving parts that you are supposed to include as padding actually do.

And it goes without saying that the "black boxes" or function calls that make OO programming or functional programming so efficient to do in groups are hell on someone learning to code.

In order to get people involved, its much better to make it easier instead of telling people to try harder.