I agree. In some ways it feels like we have gone backwards in web dev since say the early days of ASP.NET and Rails. Back then we had browser wars to keep is busy. But now browsers are broadly compatible but we have invented all this front end complexity for web apps that often don’t need it.
Stuff like DNS, IP, https can’t be helped as they are fundamental things that need backwards compatibility and are somewhat political too.
I feel that learning those things well is a better investment though than learning the frameworks.
… if I keep going I will start talking about innovation tokens!
You can learn both, though. As much as people like to trash talk it, I think learning from "the bottom up", as long as you remember to follow the 80/20 principle and not go too deep into unnecessary rabbit holes, is still the best approach in terms of long term ROI on your time. I got a degree in EE because I wanted to be a "true" full stack engineer; last year I finally got a chance to learn React and a lot of cockpit flight hours setting Microsoft Azure. It took longer but I feel I'm on much steadier ground to keep climbing up.
Stuff like DNS, IP, https can’t be helped as they are fundamental things that need backwards compatibility and are somewhat political too.
I feel that learning those things well is a better investment though than learning the frameworks.
… if I keep going I will start talking about innovation tokens!