I also feel modern web apps are just much more complex than those from the jQuery era. So codebases have to do a lot more. It's hard to find a 1:1 mapping, as we just didn't expect as much out of the web in those days.
Complete BS. Not true at all. the jquery era had ajax with dynamic dom updates, dynamic svg, css, and many things we have today except for websockets, web usb, mic, camera, and other devices. the difficulty was more around each browser implementing things differently. and css was a nightmare. just to center something horizontally or vertically (or both) took patience.
It’s not “Complete BS.” — just because we had those features does not mean most businesses used them to the same extent we do today. I was deep in the front-end weeds in 2007 and onwards, and while I may have been doing some neat stuff then, the complexity pales in comparison to the sheer amount of business logic that now lives client-side.