> Imagine a small company trying to write their own web browser from scratch nowadays. It's just not possible!

This is also because the web has a firing problem.

APIs and features barely get deprecated, even when they are obviously superceded. When they do its years and years after the fact. We also just except whacky quirks instead of fixing them and moving on.

A very clear example: we do not need CSS float anymore. It can be removed with zero impact on the development of new websites.

There's a new proposal for date-time features that replace the Date class. Except it won't, they will coexist and you have to support the Date class and all its bullshit indefinitely.

Do we really need anything other than template literals for strings?

I'm not sure what the solution is to these but an ever-growing spec seems like a big part of the problem to me.