In my experience, web development is a cocktail of....
Big project with complex database bindings and backends are usually written in Java. They may not make up most of the web (if counted as pages) or accesses (since facebook etc is highly optimized), but if you need to get a real medium sized project out of hte door in a controllable fashion (and not-perfomance optimized), Java is your friend.
Forget interpreted loose-typing languages. Forget OO by instance copy shit. Take a decent EE and refactor if something is wrong. Use XML bindings where you see fit (without additional cost). And so much more. I know many programming languages, but Java is my favourite from the vievpoint of controlled delivery and SW Quality tools.
That being said yes, i believe that general engineering skills are undervalued, but i have the serious feeling that the original poter understands something different than I do, which is the mindset to dissect problems in systems, where each system prevents imperfections of other systems to pass trough.