Desktop was simple earlier in the cycle because Microsoft rapidly reached a quasi-monopoly.

Apart from .Net, Web dev tools are made by non-software companies which seemingly use this as a lever to attract talent.

The last 10 years have seen an ongoing battle between Google, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, some large startups and FOSS-driven groups of developers.
Google: GWT, Angular, Chrome, and more
Facebook: Firebug, React among others
Twitter: Boostrap
Yahoo: YUI
Ruby on Rails: Prototype/Scriptaculous
and many, many others

Most of these products require a complete redesign / rewrite of applications to accommodate.

Unless some of these large actors suddenly disappear, it'll remain an open, ever changing market until some sort of standard design will be able to link all elements (HTML, CSS, JS, server, user state) in an harmonious and productive fashion.

As these elements are separated by design (viva la separation of concerns) - as opposed to VFP or others where they're all tied together (boo, no good) - it'll probably take another 10 years until web app dev. reach the same level of RADiness.

>John,
>
>While I agree that things were much simpler when we were using VFP in the 90's to build desktop applications, I think you can't really compare that today's applications that we are building nor the capabilities of the applications that we are using today. There's so much more interactivity involved in modern system, real time information harvesting and interaction of many independent services that require coordination.
>
>If you're building simple apps that are similar to what we build back in the 90's I think you'll find that modern tools work fine for that and aren't any more complex than FoxPro was (although the approach is different).
>
>A lot of the complexity we see today is not based on the tooling, but on bad design and over engineering. But I don't think that's due to the tools we use, rather to the communities that are effectively trying to show off 'Hey look what I can do' all the time. There's a tremendous amount of re-inventing the wheel going on. But let's not forget that that's nothing new - the same thing was going on back in the 90's even in the xBase community where you had Clipper, dBase, FoxPro all with their own communities, solviing the same library of problems over and over - separately.
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>The problem we have today IMHO is that we have too many choices on how to do things and everybody thinks we should do things differently. There are no real standards, and even those 'suggestions' (like patterns or standards and protocols like REST/SOAP etc.) are often open to interpretation.
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>I don't see that change anytime either - it's been getting worse in recent years and is exemplified by the crazy JavaScript world where a lot of smart people are chasing their tail solving problems in complicated ways. But again, that's not the problem of the tool (Javascript language) but the developers and tool builders that are supposedly designing the libraires and tools for it.
>
>At the same time - talk to some kids that are working in that space (the 20 something's) and to them working in that environment is the most natural thing in the world. They've grown up and learned to program in this environment, they don't know anything else and they are happy to live that way and deal with all those complexities that may or may not be necessary. Show them what to you and me may seem a simpler and easier way and they go "sure that works, but look what my stuff can do..." You and me as old farts may be shaking our heads, but to them that's the way things are done and we can argue back and forth what's better, but these guys are what's in demand these days.
>
>
>+++ Rick ---
>
>
>>Rick,
>>
>>Kevin Goff liked to complain about that ACA website disaster. But when you look at what happened, with countless millions spent on modern development processes delivering a comprehensive fail that was resolved by 2 old fashioned geeks in a single weekend- then IMHO it seems that modern development has completely lost its way.
>>
>>Certainly expected software developer capability and productivity 15 years ago, was greater than it is now. This is opposite the direction taken by every other computerized/automated role I can think of.
>>
>>E.g. check out the BMW factories in Germany where computers and automation allows a handful of white coated geeks to oversee long ranks of robots building vehicles, with little if any human intervention until the final steps. IMHO software development was more similar to this when VFP was at its greatest when somebody with niche expertise could make it all happen. Whereas these days in development, the factories are filled not by robots but by teams of humans spending half their time negotiating interactions between themselves and welcoming each round of Rube Goldberg change that permits fascinating panel redesigns, eventually delivering a single vehicle for a few million dollars. If you're lucky. It's as if the Panasonic pbxes of the 1990s were replaced not by Asterisk linux devices, but by rooms full of telephone operators... whose console alterations are the subject of several fascinating conferences per year to discuss the constantly changing intricacies that have telephonists heartily agreeing that it's much better today than it ever was before! Hoorah for technology!