The fact that the most common denominator for publishing an application to reach the maximum user base is a web application is kind of a depressing one to devel

The fact that the most common denominator for publishing an application to reach the maximum user base is a web application is kind of a depressing one to developers. We know that to reach a maximum user base that we need to ship using bloated tech. If an application that emulates a calculator was just now a new idea it would likely be first developed as a web application those would be an order of magnitude larger that it needs to be. It would use much more memory and cpu than a native version. You do get some things that could be a value like screen reader capabilities. It would show up in app stores but would be implemented in Electron. In the "olden days" of the 1990's such an concept would likely been done in VB6 and distributed as an .exe since that the user base of Windows desktop users was the most significant. That resources consumes by the executable would be "nit" on today's devices. Even though from a business perspective shipping bloated apps makes sense, developers are aware of the bloat and it bothers us.