Exactly. There's really not a way to make it easy. Web is the best UI dev method, that's why electron became popular.
I've also found Python + Gtk (in the Python 2 and Gtk 2 days) very simple and productive.
There are a ton of problems that you have in webdev that don't neccessarily exist in a local app. Mostly from the fact that you have state everywhere, in the client, on the server, and in the database, and you have to manage it asyncronously. React helps with it a bit, but in principle a desktop app can be "100% frontend" (I mean you still have something like MVC, but you don't have a separate server or a sandbox for window js where you have to communicate).
If my memory serves, this is also how WinForms worked.