Jonathan Blow

You keep on mentioning "the numbers" and "these things" like stuff on the web is all the same and it really isn't. I get the ire and frustration, but different categories of solutions fit different problem spaces. There's plenty of utilitarian web things that just work.

Like what? I can't think of a single web site that works for me consistently. By "the numbers" I mean, for example, the number of employee-years per unit of functionality implemented, across various fields.

The implication there is that there's an alternative, non-web, way to implement that same functionality that would somehow magically be better. As if targeting something that isn't the browser is somehow cheaper (which, well, market rates on the app market indicate otherwise).

It would be much better, but not magic, in fact it would have way less magic, in terms of hand-waving blind trust that various barely-known-of layers will somehow do the right thing. Re cheaper, I am not sure what argument you are making there, it seems to be a context switch.

Re: cheaper - that was in response to person years/unit of function. The web is well known and extensively documented. And standardised, and democratised as a result. If arbitrarily fat clients were more effective and reliable and explicable, everyone would still be doing that.

No, the popularity is just a matter of ease of access -- you type a web URL and are on the page and don't have to visibly download or install anything. That is fundamentally an ergonomic difference, not a technical one. Users don't like somehow prefer CSS.

Absolutely agree, but that ease of access is explicitly a design goal of the web, and the reason for it's success. That "just" is doing a lot of heavy lifting. The accessibility and ergonomics have value. I don't imagine a user has ever cared *how* something is written.