There's a distinction to make between "the web is successful" and "the web has made humans successful". We've paid a tremendous privacy and security cost, and a loss of control over our online lives.
Re:In Defense of the Modern Web
by paulryanrogers on Friday May 15, 2020 @11:40AM
(#23193458)
> I think the web community overall looks at native apps like they are some weird, alien technology because they're completely blinded by what they build and what tools they use.
There is some everything-looks-like-a-nail but that's not all. I'm making a native desktop app now which is slow going. Every platform I want to support is so different, and cross-platform tooling often requires branching and learning each ones quirks anyway.
Just making an Electron/ReactNative app is often the best of both worlds should a website not suffice. (Excluding concerns like battery life, app size, or memory footprint.)
FB's 5" of page load is a miserable failure that makes me question what I am doing here.
"I exclusively use apps."
Curious. Did you post this using a native app?
You can criticize it, sure. But - you are using a computer 100% because of the web, not because of spreadsheet software.
Now, back to web vs. native. You just have people who prefer either. I exclusively use apps. I think the experience is better in every way, and I've never seen a web application deliver comparable experience to a native app. But, almost every native app is backed by a web server. And, some things I do want to remain web apps, like Wikipedia.
I think the web community overall looks at native apps like they are some weird, alien technology because they're completely blinded by what they build and what tools they use. Like always, if we understood why users enjoy native apps, we could learn a lot of things. I'd argue that we are learning that, which is why there are lots of SPAs. That doesn't mean that's the only way to build software, it just means that people do actually enjoy that experience.