>stupid me thinking because it's a superior solution.
You think your snarky sarcasm fits, but it really doesn't. "Oh, everyone uses it, so it must not actually be bad?" That's not a good argument at all. :D
The main feature of the web is ubiquity. Doing a native app requires installation, update handling, etc.
That’s why the “web won.” But, when it comes to UIs, it is not technically superior.
The most popular technology is usually not exceptional in every aspect but is the most convenient for popular use cases. For example, LISP predates C by decades. Technically, C is inferior in abstraction, but ATT used it for Unix, quickly becoming the de facto standard for systems programming. That makes C a better option than LISP, only because you’ll need to go into extra layers of complexity to do a system call designed for C.
For the web, you can only use HTML/CSS/JS (even with WASM).
“Mobile doesn’t use shit from 1994”… well all the iOS apps are based on Next frameworks created in the 80s.
You probably have never used a native UI framework or tried to create an accessible component library for the web, to say something like that. Try to create an accessible select component that shows an icon in its options using a native framework and HTML, and you’ll quickly see what I mean.
Please don't be creating select components. The native one is just fine and works 100% of the time. For those of us using translation tools and trying to navigate the shit designers came up with because they want to make it "pretty" is just ... annoying and full of grief. Just say no.
The web is the best application distribution mechanism the world has ever seen. Even though things have improved enormously in the last decade and a half, the ceiling is still miles below native (though the floor is far more accessible). None of that matters though, because all someone needs to do to get your app in front of their eyeballs is type a URL.
Oh that's why 90% of online interactions are now on the web now ... stupid me thinking because it's a superior solution.
And before you say '90% are actually on mobile', well mobile doesn't use shit from 1994 also. Wonder why.