I have considered this question many times for my side projects. On long term, I want to transition to native apps. But for now, I am sticking with web apps for

I have considered this question many times for my side projects. On long term, I want to transition to native apps. But for now, I am sticking with web apps for side projects. The reasons why I want to move to native dev eventually: 1. It seems more fun, better access to hardware, you can build more experimental apps like a network monitor that plays/generates music based on network stats, you could tell if something is wrong from another room. 2. Speaking of monitoring, you can build apps that are local-only and you don't need to worry about your servers being up on your vacation etc. 3. And with local only, you don't have to worry too much about privacy laws. But the big cons of native apps for me are: 1. Monopoly of app stores and difficulty of distributing applications outside of them. As a consumer, I appreciate quality controls that app stores provide but as a dev, I am not a big fan of them. 2. Lack of any open-source IDEs for app dev in Apple's ecosystem. I would focus mostly on Apple's ecosystem but I don't like the idea of being tied to XCode. I really like that in web dev, I can spin up $5 VPS and start coding with vim. 3. And even more specific to my situation, I am a web dev at work, so there is extra cognitive load when learning native dev. The pros and cons of web dev are essentially reverse of above. You can start web dev really easily, there is no one gatekeeper, there seems to be more jobs for web dev. But it is hard to build interesting apps on the web. Everything on the web seems more salesy, less innovative. The reason why I am sticking with web dev for now is due to cognitive load. Though sometimes working on something different from your day job actually feels refreshing.