I don't agree. It took me multiple years to really wrap my head around building web pages (to say nothing of apps) in PHP. There's just too much h*ckin' stuff in the web that you have to be aware of and being able to build stores of relevant information is definitely in some ways easier--Stack Overflow exists--but in others, thanks to the volume of crap you just have to chew through, it is much more difficult.

Oh, if you're talking about anything on the front end more rich than simple classic forms and full page reloads, I agree. It just wasn't clear what you meant by "non-trivial".