Webservers shall create and provide the readily HTML so browsers can render the website without JavaScript. Actually text-browsers should render it and also allow disabled persons using it without hassle.
Instead SPA (or more direct JavaScript) is used to force the browser to assemble the HTML and it is slow and waste resources. Creating website which create load on the client-site is bad because we’ve power on the server dedicated for this task - not so on client.
Looking back web-developers need something imperative and more direct than CGI, PHP or JSP. The initial backslash against JS was right. I sadly shipped JS.
When a powerful application is needed? Make a native application and use an appropriate toolkit (Gtk or QT).
JS was a terrible language but nowadays it is pretty good in some areas, passable in others, with some horror shows left in. The ecosystem and tooling are the real problems. I don’t understand why these issues haven’t been addressed by Google et al.
Native applications are just so much more expensive to develop and maintain. Given the nuances of different platforms, it’s also very difficult to keep different versions in sync. People expect collaboration as table stakes, which makes that task even harder.
I agree accessibility is a problem.
Ironically the Java applet had the right idea, as a compromise between our positions, but wrong time and maybe wrong language? Its Swiss cheese security didn’t help either.
Quality isn't free, yes.
> Given the nuances of different platforms, it’s also very difficult to keep different versions in sync.
Don't tightly couple applications and backend service versions (where a backend is even needed, otherwise make it all local) and this is not a problem. You should be using open (relatively stable) protocols wherever possible anyway.
Web apps "solve" platform differences by completely disregarding them and expecting users to adapt to the application instead. This does not make them better.
