I wholeheartedly disagree. I have an undergrad and masters in Electrical Engineering. I work as a Digital Signal Processing (DSP) Software Developer. On the lower end I've improved DSP C code by rewriting important sections in assembly. I've had to debug with JTAG, logic analyzers and instruction accurate simulators. On the higher end I've had to use Matlab and Python to create a tuning tool to tune active noise cancellation (ANC) on one of the most popular selling ANC capable wireless headsets to date. I'd like to think I have a solid programming background.

I have been trying to write a basic webapp that's a duolingo clone for piano chords on and off for years. Every single time I try it ends up falling apart because there is so many things to tie together.

I started with plain html, css, js. It quickly grew to the point where every change was breaking something else. Clearly I need to test so I try to learn to how test web code. Documentation and forums everywhere only help with testing assuming you're using a framework. I get busy with my dayjob again and don't pick this up for another few months

Screw this, I really liked the rails tutorial by michael hartl I completed in 2013 I'll give that method a shot. Turns out nothing from 2013 is relevant anymore. Server side rendering for a dynamic front end is confusing as hell. I have similar problem trying Django. Keep in mind every place I look for help react and various js backends are being shoved down my throat. I get busy with my dayjob again and don't pick this up for another few months

Ok fuck this I'll just bite the bullet and learn react and backend js. Now I'm in webpack hell. every problem is solved by making further complicated changes to babbel and sucking in 100 more js dependencies. I still don't have a SQL database integrated, authentication, a front end or tests and I'm miserably confused. I get busy with my dayjob again and don't pick this up for another few months

Time to give asp .net core a try. Holy shit one command gives me an entire hostable front end and backend with authentication. I'm so close. Oop nevermind there's so much black magic in this sample app I have no idea how to start associating my database schema with the logged in user. The sample does so much for me, I barely understand how to extend it. I get busy with my dayjob again and don't pick this up for another few months

Finally I just accept that it's all too complicated and try to integrate a react front end with firebase. I'm still struggling with so many issues but I've never gotten this far before. I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. I get busy with my dayjob again and don't pick this up for another few months

There isn't a single tutorial/documentation/sample that I can find that uses a database outside of sqlite, a backend, a front end, authentication, unit/integration tests, and how to host it all. As soon as I get two or three of them together it becomes such a mess that I can't complete the rest. This is the bare minimum for a webapp. Everybody expects to be able to login and view/modify/add their data. Every developer expects to be able to make a change, run some tests and push to production.

I don't think I'm incompetent. Given enough time an energy I could get any of my above attempts to work. But I have a dayjob and a social life and want to have a bit fun toiling around with a website on the side. A webapp is not very simple. If it is then prove it. Show me your codebase and explain it to me. My email is in my bio. Or at least link to someone that has