Sometimes, I wonder why we spend billions trying optimized a javascript code that will anyway run slower than a naive C/C++ app solving the same problem. Part of the answer is that you just need one url, a browser to access an app: Much simpler than downloading and installing a software.

From my point of view, in a near future, browsers will execute a language that will be statically typed, not garbage collected, with support of multi-threading (I mean real threads with shared memory, not webworkers), and mapping to SIMD units (AVX, SSE, NEON, ...). That day, there won't be any reason anymore for web apps to be slower than native apps. Plus, they will be a lot more power efficient than the javascript vm.