It has been educational to watch the SerenityOS / Ladybird team implement browser features. As they make real websites work, you can see how the technologies for even simple brochure sites have changed. For example, logos may be SVG instead of simple images which makes sense given the range of screen sizes and resolutions that need to be supported.

You can also see that CSS continues to grow but in pragmatic ways that actually reduce the amount of JavaScript to do the kinds of things that users expect these days.

On the performance and capability front front, WASM is a game changer.

Regardless of what JS framework is in vogue, I do not think it is fair to say that we are doing the same thing on the web as we always have or even to say that the base technologies are getting more complex for no reason. At least, it is no more fair than any other programming domain. I mean, we can look at Excel and VisiCalc and say that we are creating the same apps that we always have with more complexity and bloat. I mean, people do say that but there is an awful lot left out of that analysis. Even more so if I compare VisiCalc and Excel via Office365 in a browser.

Regular people are routinely accomplishing far more with their computers than they have in the past. More and more of that is being done in web browsers.