How people use them is another matter. But don't blame that on the technology.
And of course we should blame the technology: the sole purpose of a standard is to be used by people. If people struggle with it the standard is unfit for its purpose.
That is the state of things.
'People' is equivocal here. While complex, and (as you point out, in so many words) an evolved standard, the HTML/CSS/JS stack is arguably one of humanity's greatest achievements, up there with the invention of paper, or perhaps cuneiform.
It's imperfect, like all living standards, but it manages to be ubiquitous, expressive, and _useful_. And for those of us who grew up with these standards, they are second nature.
Like piano, mastering these standards gives you the ability to express complex UI concepts with grace and alacrity.
Don't smash up your parents' piano simply because practicing scales is a chore :)
I witnessed evolution of UIs from Turbo Vision to modern web and mobile frameworks. My first commercial website went live in 1999. No, UI is not hard and doesn’t require any mastery. As a matter of fact, building decent UI for a client-server application is a simple task with the right tools and processes. Modern Web is not parents‘ piano - you can call it elegant only if you have seen nothing else. It’s a fridge with mostly expired cheap food, from which you have to cook a decent meal for a party. It is possible, no doubt. Without food we will die, so we have to cook it. Instead we could just go shopping.
We deserve to go extinct.
