[javajosh]

But web development is terrible. There are so many approaches, languages, frameworks, and philosophies - its incredibly hard for newbies to enter the field.

Educational systems have evolved a solution for this kind of thing: you isolate newbies from conflict. You essentially lie to them, you simplify the situation, and tell them "do this". They do it, and now they know something. Now they have a bit of skin in the game, they have a data point to participate in future academic conflict.

But with modern web dev, the conflict is up-front-and-center, and newbies are not isolated from it.

Bowery, GAE, and meteor address these issues in a very similar way: they make reasonable up-front decisions about how an app should be structured. You can deviate, but the defaults are not bad.

These decisions are a real pain point for a lot of people, and I think that's what they meant with that statement. I would also add: be careful defending complexity. It is very easy for a professional who's built a career navigating complexity to descry reductions to that complexity, as it will directly affect her ability to make money.