"That's not to say that the web might not some be supplanted by something better..."

Whomever wrote the first paragraph of your comment should get in touch with the person who wrote the second paragraph.

OK, seriously, though, let's summarize:

1) Person says "web development sucks, here's why: $REASONS"

2) You reply: "it's the only truly cross-platform development environment ever"

3) I (and others) reply: "no, it really isn't. it isn't even a development environment, by any reasonable measure."

Now you're putting words in my mouth about convincing vendors and starting movements. I'm not trying to start a revolution here, just trying to counter the notion that we can't do any better than the pile of junk we've adopted. You don't have to love your captors!

I have no idea if someone will come up with a revolutionary, grand unified solution tomorrow, but I know that this process starts with the acknowledgement that what we have sucks, and that we have lots of examples of better solutions to work from. Hell...just having a well-defined set of 1995-era UI components defined as a standard would be a quantum leap forward in terms of application development.