I agree, but if your coworkers is anything like mine and you asked him if there is a fundamental problem with web development as a platform choice for internal apps, I expect he would suddenly forget all the pain he goes through on a regular basis. I've watched my company burn about a million dollars unnecessarily in the last two years because of choosing a 100% web interface for an entirely internal project (of dubious value in the first place).

The zealotry in this field is getting close to unsustainable in my opinion. Companies thought the proliferation of ms access apps was bad, wait until they try to do something with the proliferation of overarchitected web apps based on a wide assortment of fashionable at the time but now unpopular languages and frameworks that hardly anyone has experience on and is most certainly not interested in working on.