Plenty of digital agencies do frontend work across multiple delivery platform formats

I don’t doubt that. But, if they advertise a need for “front end developers”, that would strongly imply web developers.

I would definitely be surprised if they advertised a position for a “front end developer”, I applied and during the interview they asked questions about Windows Forms development.

Be prepared to be surprised then.

Trust me, I’ve been on plenty of successful interviews. Not once have they wanted a “full stack developer” or a front end developer that could do Windows Forms.

I’m not saying that no one wants desktop developers - they just don’t refer to them as “front end” developers.

Windows Forms or any windows desktop development was already losing favor when I was looking for a job in 2008 after being at one company for almost a decade.

Now in 2019, any developer who cares about his career will run screaming the other way if a company even mentions that they are doing desktop software unless they can get a job with Microsoft or Adobe.

Believe me as well, doing frontend native and Web UIs since mid-90s, including digital agencies.

Plenty of companies are doing greenfield native UIs, including desktop. Mobile is desktop as well, just a matter of hardware form factor.

Mobile is “not just like desktop” unless you’re using a cross platform framework and even then you have different constraints - unreliable network connections, different screen sizes and interactions, you have to be more mindful of power and memory usage, dealing with app stores and review processes, etc.

But its really not hard to look at job boards or where the money is going both from internal and external investments to see which cart to tie your horse to. It definitely is not the desktop.

Even Microsoft isn’t really focusing on desktop development and has put .Net Framework in maintenance mode.

A tablet with keyboard is a desktop.

A laptop with wireless connectivity is a desktop.

Anything with a pluggable keyboard and screen is a desktop.

Something that many fail to grasp.

What's your point? Just like "front end development" implies "web development" to most people, "desktop development" implies "development that is not web, Android, or iOS".

To people that don't know better.

Are you really saying that there are people posting to HN that don’t know “desktop applications” don’t include applications running on laptops?

Indeed.

In that case, would you really want to work there?

They also do SEO and WordPress sites. And many of the front end devs also do back end or devops, and vice versa. "Front end" isn't a synonym for an agency employee, it's just one role that may be needed at such an agency.