some things that have made web dev simpler for me over the last ~20 years:
* new CSS features like flexbox / grid / etc
* "push to deploy" hosting like github pages, netlify, fly, RIP heroku, etc
* sqlite (I never learned how to use mysql or postgres)
* programming languages that include a production webserver like Go
* let's encrypt
* Caddy is SO much easier to set up than nginx
* Vue.js is much easier for me than jquery or vanilla js ever was
* `async` and `fetch` in javascript
(3/?)