is it really impressive that a browser can do a lot that regular desktop apps have been able to do for decades? I find it pretty depressing, really.
webgl was a good idea and I dedicated years to trying to make interactive browser applications, and now I've concluded that if I want to make product in time, that works for decades, on all platforms, at speed, I will use systems like Qt for desktop apps, not browsers.
For me, that's amazing. There's a lot of value in having options (with low friction) for casual creators like myself.
Agree with your point about dev experience being painful though.
Now I can open a browser and have a 3D sculpting application and nobody needs to care what OS I run. You can denigrate webapps all you want, I won't hear you over the sound of how happy I am that I don't have to dual-boot with Windows anymore.
The web rules.
Chromebooks are everywhere these days. They do have to fallback on Android apps and Debian apps sometimes, but this is also what makes them so versatile.
This is all going through IPC in a command buffer like architecture where the display lists are formed in another process. Where you can have several framebuffers that you can render 2d, 3d and intermix them in a beautiful final output thanks to the sophisticated compositor.
The state-of-the-art on desktop was a in-process direct rendering instead.
Modern browser are wonderful machines, we should be glad we are seing this happening.
Also, Google contantly are being bashed on HN, i know, who like the big man right? i think this we should thank them for pushing the envelope on a open platform, that will probably even eat the closed app platform with time.
Just Dorothy-like hackers would'nt be able to fight back the awful world of closed source applications platform if browsers were not what they are today. We are constantly in danger to get back to where we were in the nineties. If this whole "cloud computer" paradigm were not enough of a threat to a world of global scale control of the digital life of billions by only a few.
Its good to be skeptic and bash the big man, its important to fight back, but lets respect and give them props for the things they do right. A piece of software that has value on its own by the way.
Giving your presented credentials, you should now how and why this is not exactly the same.
Software is constant automation and improvement, and if the things we suffer to do today, that can make someone be considered special and be well payed, will be achieved easily by children in the future, its just because of the hard work of the pioneers that suffered but persisted in the beginning.
The Unix was there in the 70's, and yet we celebrate "the same" old thing today, because its open, its available and even kids can change and compile it in its Linux incarnation.
So while it maybe looks the same under the surface, its definitely not the same, and we should be glad every time technology gets popular and easy, because its not easy to get there.
Edit: Sorry for the way i've started my first commentary, it was rude and unnecessary, rather you knew or not anything about the matter.
this is incredibly better than the "web scenario" which is (and I got burned by this two times - there won't ever be a third time), "you come back to the app two months later, except the company has shut down and all your data removed" or "you come back to the app two months later, but you now have to pay for the superior tier if you want to be able to edit your stuff because some features you were using have been moved in that tier" (hello genmymodel), or "you come back to the app two months later and it's now super slow and has a couple annoying bugs but you can't downgrade because it's a web app" (hello asana).
I don't have any of the problems you describe with updates or installers.