Hello, devil's advocate here... I totally agree with the sentiment that keeping things simpler is preferable, and that there are problems created by programmers who either don't care, are trying to preserve their job security (or pad their resumes with buzzwords), don't know better, or don't take the time to think out the design/maintainability of what they are doing.
On a recent project to provide real-time, asynchronously updating, data-driven, interactive graphs and gauges on a modern web application, I had no choice other than to make use of: HTML, CSS, jQuery, Javascript, XML, Flash, PHP, CodeIgniter framework, SQL (MySQL), SimpleUnit, etc. It is always frustrating to realize that we basically have to program in 6 or so different languages/tools (or more) to accomplish something. As you pointed out, even I probably omittted a plethora of other little utilities, supporting infrastructure or OS functionality that was used to support this app.
So, I know your circumstances might have been specific, but, how else do you propose one to meet such a requirement, given today's bag of technology options? The complexity today is just the nature of the beast........ which is why it's ever more important to try darn hard to K.I.S.S.
-6d