The web became as popular as it did precisely because it sucks. A lot of the supporting technologies made design decisions that favored easy of use over stability and things that experienced developers like. Every argument I hear about how the web sucks basically boils down to an argument that it should be more consistent and well-designed. But most well-designed technologies fail because engineering doesn't win the day -- delivery does. I say all this even though I consider myself an engineer with a penchant for the craft of writing software. I love beautifully architected systems, but I have to sadly admit that they're often not relevant to the bottom line.

I don't think it's time now or in the near future for the web to die. Just as we often still mindlessly adhere to the 80 character limit for terminal width, even though this limit has its origins in the size of punch cards, we'll still be using traditional web stack technologies decades from now.