From reading this I get the sense the problems are lower level and there is no impetus to fix them.

I'm embarrassed to say, having programmed for over a decade, and running Linux for half of that, I still have no idea how to setup my computer to serve a webpage (or even a file)

I probably need to `apt-get install apache` and then deal with some magic config files and incantations and hope I don't mess something up and expose my whole computer to the open web. Then there is the whole mess of NAT (wasn't IPv6 supposed to kill off NATs?).

I need to then figure out the endless (and impenetrable) configurations in my OpenWRT/LuCI router to open a port and have it forwarded to my computer. Or maybe that needs to be done "upstream" in my landlords internet cabinet..? I'd have no idea how to even figure that one out b/c my router doesn't make it obvious in any way.

Then I need to find some DDNS service and figure out how to get that to route traffic from a URL to my IP (and then it's somehow supposed to reconfigure when my IP dynamically changes? Is that some cron job I need to write?)

Hosting webpages from home is still complicated and no progress has been made. And if you do it wrong someone will hack you and steal all your files :) The incumbents are probably happy it's so painful and you still need to do technical gymnastics to punch through NATs and whatnot. This text further confirms it by just telling people to host int he cloud. And understandably.. you'd have to be a total nut to serve a file from your home instead of dropping it on Google Drive.

When I was studying this stuff in college I just figured tech is in an awkward teenage phase and this will all get worked out and streamlined - but I think it's not going anywhere This isn't the tech future of 80s scifi

I don't mean to be wholly negative, I'd actually appreciate if someone pointed me to a good step by step to set everything up. At the moment I'm a sellout :) and I just use Github Pages and git push HTML/CSS files there. Ideally it really should be just as easy to git pushing to your own home computer but till then I guess I'll do that..