For me, the question becomes—if we must write applications to one target that's going to run on a server anyway—why oh why must it be web tech? The whole appeal

For me, the question becomes—if we must write applications to one target that's going to run on a server anyway—why oh why must it be web tech? The whole appeal of applications (not documents) in the browser was that they were (kinda, sorta) able to run on any platform. If your target is one browser on one OS, and you're writing an actual application, why would you subject yourself, your developers, and your product quality to an HTML + JS UI?