correct. as an industry we threw out battle-tested GUI toolkits and programming models for something completely backward. 15-20 years later we have excel in the browser. great. The no-deployment (for deployment is too often an after-thought of the main functionality) model was too attractive and blinded people to the costs.

The 90s were great, not because they had the best experiences possible at the time, but because there was such anticipation for the future. Sadly the web did not evolve quickly enough, and we have been paying the price ever since.

The only place where GUI apps have reigned supreme is in trading applications in finance, although I suspect that dominance is beginning to erode.