Native emulation has been a goal of the web from the beginning. I can recall several efforts as far back as '96 to create websites to replace desktop apps and w

Native emulation has been a goal of the web from the beginning. I can recall several efforts as far back as '96 to create websites to replace desktop apps and we arguably achieved that around 2005 with apps like Google Maps or Writely. Two years before the iPhone was released we were chasing the tail of "native". The web vs native debate skips over the idea that these two worlds actually inform each other and are largely populated by the same developer community. As an industry, I think people are starting to place more value on the comprehensibility of software over its capability and that's where I think PPK hits home here. When you're building to satisfy immediate needs it makes sense to eventually stop and revisit your implementation to make sure (1) those needs are still relevant and (2) your implementation adequately satisfies them. That's what I see this as, not a call to stop chasing native, but a call for replacing the patchwork with comprehensible design. I think that's perfectly reasonable and I would go so far as to say we should build it in as a cultural value to pause every 10 years to both celebrate what we've accomplished and refine the result.