I think good desktop apps are infinitely better than good web apps.
However, I pretty much only build web apps. Here's some reasons why:
* Getting pixel-perfect design is SO MUCH FASTER&EASIER on the web (and using web-first tech like React Native, in my experience, has largely just met a stigma of not-really-native and sometimes suffers on perf for the sake of design). [FWIW I've been doing "web" stacks for almost 20 years, but I've also done C# for ~10, Java for ~5, and C++ for ~5]
* Even if you're not doing anything particularly resource-intensive, it's way easier to target a single machine spec (your server) and know everything just works, rather than worrying about resource-related bugs on lower-end/oddball machines, antivirus, hardware issues (out of ram? out of HD space? etc)
* Similarly, shouldering heavy load/cost on a server lets my apps be usable by more people who might not have up-to-date or capable machines
* Barrier-of-entry is significantly lower on web apps: someone can click a link and immediately demo whatever I made, rather than worrying about marketing and landing pages trying to convince someone that it's safe and OK to download/execute a random binary
* Web apps are a single codebase that's also usable on mobile, tablets, and other devices without having to worry about even more build targets as long as your design is reasonably responsive. I know these "native" libs also technically support that, but it seems there's always custom build configuration per device and/or lower-level per-platform code for e.g. IO/native functionality
That said, I wish desktop apps were easier to design for. I could probably get over all the other "downsides" if I could make native apps that looked and felt as smooth & nice as web ones.
However, I pretty much only build web apps. Here's some reasons why:
* Getting pixel-perfect design is SO MUCH FASTER&EASIER on the web (and using web-first tech like React Native, in my experience, has largely just met a stigma of not-really-native and sometimes suffers on perf for the sake of design). [FWIW I've been doing "web" stacks for almost 20 years, but I've also done C# for ~10, Java for ~5, and C++ for ~5]
* Even if you're not doing anything particularly resource-intensive, it's way easier to target a single machine spec (your server) and know everything just works, rather than worrying about resource-related bugs on lower-end/oddball machines, antivirus, hardware issues (out of ram? out of HD space? etc)
* Similarly, shouldering heavy load/cost on a server lets my apps be usable by more people who might not have up-to-date or capable machines
* Barrier-of-entry is significantly lower on web apps: someone can click a link and immediately demo whatever I made, rather than worrying about marketing and landing pages trying to convince someone that it's safe and OK to download/execute a random binary
* Web apps are a single codebase that's also usable on mobile, tablets, and other devices without having to worry about even more build targets as long as your design is reasonably responsive. I know these "native" libs also technically support that, but it seems there's always custom build configuration per device and/or lower-level per-platform code for e.g. IO/native functionality
That said, I wish desktop apps were easier to design for. I could probably get over all the other "downsides" if I could make native apps that looked and felt as smooth & nice as web ones.