Getting started in the web ecosystem involves a lot of similarly impenetrable "magic". There just isn't a community built around creating project templates and creation scripts and such for lower-level programming.
I'd say you're right about the GUI shitshow, and the web ecosystem is just a slightly different kind of shitshow.
There's a huge amount of tiny chores with web development, that if you hadn't learnt how to do them in 1.5 seconds 5 years ago, would take you 2-3 days to figure out.
There are a hundred small chores that must be done to build and launch software on the web that you have to learn before you get it going.
I strongly doubt desktop doesn't have the exact same volume of inane things as webdev.
I'd say you're right about the GUI shitshow, and the web ecosystem is just a slightly different kind of shitshow.