Zero money in web apps? You mean like Google, Facebook, Amazon, Twitch, Netflix, and YouTube?
There's way more money is web apps than desktop apps. hands down. I'm not talking about mobile because this is a convo about electron.
Those examples aren't event good, though. They all seems to be becoming less popular these days.
This can't be true seeing as Google Docs is used by many companies and students.
And "better" may not be the goal of many web apps. They may be trying to measure success by "convenience" rather than being objectively "better".
Win32, Java, MacOS, et al lost because there were such strong standards for doing things the One True Way that competing standards couldn't flourish and the APIs stagnated.
In JavaScript, a new framework comes out every year and goes straight at the throat of the old one. The reason there is churn is because these new frameworks are actually solving problems better than the old ones, and because of the LACK of a monoculture developers will actually switch to them. Which in turn is why framework designers are drawn to it, which in turn leads to more new frameworks.
Is iOS solving problems better today than they were last year? Or in 2015? Because JavaScript is solving problems way better this year than last.
- apps from untrusted developers can be run safely
- app installs are measured in milliseconds and don't require switching windows
- app updates are invisible to the user
- beginners can modify apps without leaving the app itself (MySpace profiles, etc)
- references deep inside one app can be embedded in another
- apps run on nearly every device from one codebase
Native app programming can do many things well, but failing on these counts is a deal breaker for many purposes. You act like JavaScript's weaknesses are somehow due to ignorance on our part, but they are tradeoffs made deliberately.
And for the most part, the things JavaScript is bad at (high performance graphics, professional ergonomics, etc) are things that are improving. I don't see native apps getting millisecond installs any time soon. It's a classic disruptive technology.
Actually - pig's feet are actually a pretty good eatin' portion of the pig. If you've ever had them, you might agree.
https://github.com/jashkenas/coffeescript/wiki/list-of-langu...
Nobody in the last ~20 years has cared about writing Web apps before JS came along. There's basically zero money in it, and it's massively expensive, both in terms of actual development time per feature (easily 10x the cost of working in sane languages with sane runtimes), and also in finding trendy hipsters who don't know algorithms or data structures but took four weeks of coding academy classes a couple years ago. And as for Electron, Electron has existed for over three decades (Project Athena launched in 1983) -- if its massive "Nixon throwing the peace signs before getting on the plane" moment hasn't happened by then, sorry, but it's not going to happen.
But now? People are making all kinds of great new languages, and more often than not, they don't repeat JS's mistakes. People are excited about programming again -- JS is so bad that it's single-handedly revitalizing interest in languages which two of the largest tech companies in the world are behind, yet couldn't make popular.
This is a Big Deal.
(You are being parodied mostly for being a Slack developer, not disclosing it up front, and then trying to convince folks that Electron is good, which makes you sound a lot like a pig farmer trying to sell pigs' feet.)