The "desktop" market is considerably larger than you think it is. It includes a vast array of professional apps for things like CAD/CAM, SPICE, numeric simulati

The "desktop" market is considerably larger than you think it is. It includes a vast array of professional apps for things like CAD/CAM, SPICE, numeric simulation and analysis, graphics and "real" word processing, management of large data sets, industrial control software, heavy clients for complex remote control applications, typesetting, etc. along with the standard web and software engineering use cases. These are not "legacy" apps. They are huge cutting-edge professional suites that drive massive chunks of the economy and contain some of the most complex and challenging computer code ever written. We're talking about stuff like Monte Carlo analysis and genetic algorithm generation of physical machines, simulation of massive electronic circuits, etc... some of these things are the closest thing software engineering has to modern wonders of the world. Go try re-implementing SolidWorks in JavaScript as a client/server app or for Android or iOS and then tell me desktop is dead. Then there's the whole issue of security, privacy, and data ownership. Cloud demands a lot of trust in the provider, and mobile treats user data with something near contempt (apps "own" their files, etc.). There is absolutely no way I am writing a novel or a Ph.D thesis in the cloud or on a mobile device. I'm doing it on a machine I control with a backup system I control where an app being pulled from an app store or a cloud provider experiencing a hack/failure won't obliterate my two years of work. Granted that such things can be written now in languages other than C++, and sometimes can even be shipped in those languages without torturing the user with secondary runtime installs and other insults. But C++ still really rules here. You write it, you build it, and you ship it. Bloat is fairly minimal. Even if you use Qt the bloat is still a lot less than Jabba.