We should start treating this like a cultural issue. The PC existed for a generation before there was a real Internet, and at that point all apps were desktop

We should start treating this like a cultural issue. The PC existed for a generation before there was a real Internet, and at that point all apps were desktop apps -- CLI, GUI or otherwise. Then the web came along and it sucked. Then Gmail came along and showed it didn't have to suck, and further that you could build real applications on the web using JavaScript. Then a truly insane number of people learned JavaScript and JavaScript only, and since JavaScript only ran on the web they only built web apps with it. The vast, vast majority of new, young programmers only know JavaScript, or maybe they know JavaScript and a "backend" language like Ruby, Python, or PHP, but that's less likely now post-node. The vast, vast majority of cool, new tech needs to be built by programmers, and because of cultural reasons (young people are cool!) and business reasons (young people are cheap and otherwise exploitable!), those programmers are new, young programmers. And so if your app now needs to be a desktop app, and you have a bunch of new, young programmers who are only really conversant with JavaScript, which UI framework will you use: - Qt. Sure you can use Qt Quick, but it doesn't really run on the web and your engineers have almost certainly never used it. - Electron. Sure it's objectively bad, but it runs everywhere you care about and your engineers can start today. Or, if it's easier, look at it from the perspective of a young JS dev. They know JS; they're good at building SPAs; they have an app idea; .......they're probably building it in JS. The arguments against Electron all boil down to "the web is a shitty application platform and JS is a shit language". You can't expect JS devs to cop to that, especially with the web as successful as it is. I'm -- if you can't tell by my vaguely grouchy tone -- not an Electron fan. But my side fucked up. We let a gross blob of inefficient, JavaScript-running C++ code (that we charitably refer to as "the browser") become the platform of the future. We designed it in the worst ways, either in 10 days or by committee, and we didn't take it seriously ever. And it's only now that our jobs force us to use web apps that we suddenly give a shit, and for some reason we feel like none of this is our fault. All I can really say is grousing about it just feels like deflection. Let's just try and not mess the next one of these up.