I think one of WebGPU's greatest strengths is learning, as you can get started pretty easily, and you actually learn a modern approach to GPU. Vulkan requires a significant amount of boilerplate just to establish a connection to the GPU and set up basic resources like the ability to allocate buffers. In WebGPU, the latter is one or two lines of code.
That said, there are some really nice learning resources for Vulkan as well, so if you're motivated and determined, it's also not a bad way to learn modern GPU.
So I just went through this process and I have to slightly disagree. I'm coming from literally no knowledge of low-level graphics programming. My most relevant experience is writing against Canvas2D, which is not relevant at all.
I first tried WebGPU, and was so overwhelmed with detail that it was nearly impossible to connect the dots. So I went back and decided to learn WebGL first. I know that it's very different, but the whole state machine thing makes it so much easier to understand, at a conceptual level, what you're trying to do.
It didn't even take that long, just a couple of weekends and I was already familiar with the basics. I'm not going to waste time trying to become super proficient, but it gives me enough context to go back and try WebGPU again.
It's still in origin trials on Chrome and behind flags in Firefox and Safari. That said it's pretty stable at this point, for reference Chrome plans on enabling it for all sites and users by default towards the end of May.
That said, there are some really nice learning resources for Vulkan as well, so if you're motivated and determined, it's also not a bad way to learn modern GPU.