"This mess" being the greatest period of technology in history. Web browsers have become the most important and most empowering tools ever built. I'm really not convinced we should reverse that for some old man unix philosophy rant.

The web is an application platform. It is really the remnants of its history as a document presentation platform that makes it add all these ultra high level declarative features that make up the bulk of the complexity of a browser. Ironically, these features, much more than scripting, also make up the bulk of the attack surface for browser exploits. Features like USB and VR are not the problem, you can just turn them off and everything still works, but one little change to CSS layouting can turn a web page into salad.

We are not building things for the technology sake. The user comes first, usability and accessibility is paramount. That's where we work around. History has shown is that it's easier to teach the browser new tricks than to make native easier to use. I want to:

go to some website => solve problem => finish

without extra steps. As a user I usually really don't care, I just am not interested in the problem and I am already spending too much time with stuff I am not interested in.

So finding an easier way for hard problems is a sign of weakness? Lol…

> The web was invented as a presentation layer for information, not a VM that executes arbitrary remote code and can talk to hardware.

The wheel was almost certainly not invented for the automobile, and yet, your car has four of them.

That ship has sailed. It has turned into a big whale with shipping containers on it's back.