As a web developer I appreciate the concession from an embedded systems programmer that I am in fact not simply a monkey, but the quoted section probably goes a bit too far.
For instance, terrible UIs on the web are just as common as terrible UIs in GUI applications. And making a cross-platform GUI application that looks good on all platforms requires familiarity with tools specific to each platform, which is much more involved than learning browser quirks.
The hardest thing about the web is probably how fast it moves, but that's also what makes it exciting.
I did C and C++ programming for more than 10 years, before suddenly delving into serious web development only 3 years ago. I soon realized that I had vastly underestimated how deeply technical web development is.
But the reason was simply that I had formed my opinion back in ~1998, when "web development" really did mean just HTML, and maybe some roll-over script, most of the time! Being a systems programmer, I simply never had occasion to update my perception, as "web development" dramatically evolved while I wasn't looking.
For instance, terrible UIs on the web are just as common as terrible UIs in GUI applications. And making a cross-platform GUI application that looks good on all platforms requires familiarity with tools specific to each platform, which is much more involved than learning browser quirks.
The hardest thing about the web is probably how fast it moves, but that's also what makes it exciting.