> It turned out the distribution (and to some extent, ownership) problems eclipsed every other problem in software.
I have a different perspective. I see it more as a question about runtime environment. We still have 20y old Delphi applications in production, and distribution is trivial, corporate machines have software that just installs the apps the users need based on their roles, and they autoupdate etc. My team still hates them and want to replace them with webapps, even with no distribution or ownership issues.
For us the big issue is the "it's not working for me, what could be wrong?" cases where you have to dedicate half a day or more of expert time trying to figure out which absurd corner of microsoft windows is causing issues on the particular intersection of that one application on that one entirely unique computer configuration (even after corporate management of software/policies etc), and of cause that one particular user, because what could they have done?
Web apps have the benefit that they don't run on microsoft windows, they run on chrome (even if you use edge), and chrome is a much better operating system than windows will ever dream of being. It even fulfilled java's pipedream of being cross platform (well effectively from a user perspective anyway).
We've had a similar issue even with our sass webapp. It started with one user at one client where a single UI in our large SPA started encountered odd bugs. And then other employees in the same department started having the same exact issue. We spent a considerable amount of time investigating the issue with our company pushing back claiming it was an issue on their side. Eventually it escalated and we did a call with their users and management. I was able to successfully debug the issue, but their management was not that happy! The issue: Fantasy football Chrome extension their employees had installed which their IT department obviously did not authorize!
Indeed, webapps are not immune to distribution problems. Wayward and invasive browser extensions are a clear threat, as are 3rd-party dependencies (and their dependencies) loaded at runtime. Which is why companies like https://sentry.io exist. I think the difference is that webapps are "distributable by default" and it takes real work to break this. Versus having local desktop apps which require work to distribute. A potent example of the power of defaults.
Through the halls and chat rooms of every company populated by developers you hear constant groaning about software distribution problems (we call it deployment). Yes, we managed to fuck that up and a hundred other things along the way. So many hours wasted on that bullshit.
I left web development and have been having the time of my life. Web dev is nothing but stress and pain. The first relatively pain free web dev experience I had was using Vue3 (not counting Laravel ten years ago).
I have a different perspective. I see it more as a question about runtime environment. We still have 20y old Delphi applications in production, and distribution is trivial, corporate machines have software that just installs the apps the users need based on their roles, and they autoupdate etc. My team still hates them and want to replace them with webapps, even with no distribution or ownership issues.
For us the big issue is the "it's not working for me, what could be wrong?" cases where you have to dedicate half a day or more of expert time trying to figure out which absurd corner of microsoft windows is causing issues on the particular intersection of that one application on that one entirely unique computer configuration (even after corporate management of software/policies etc), and of cause that one particular user, because what could they have done?
Web apps have the benefit that they don't run on microsoft windows, they run on chrome (even if you use edge), and chrome is a much better operating system than windows will ever dream of being. It even fulfilled java's pipedream of being cross platform (well effectively from a user perspective anyway).