>One argument against browser based applications is that they incur browser security holes: some holes thought to be closed reappear. Why not skip the browser ?

Oh that's just as bad in apps. You can't see what an app does. Many apps are validated only when they get entered into the store - once they get updated the checks are minimal. There have been countless instances of data leaks with apps stealing login info and forwarding it to other servers. Those issues are universal - same with a desktop app. If you install a desktop - you don't really know what it does. So you have to be prudent about what you run. At least Web apps can't really muck with your local data - your only real worry is leaking secrets (cookies/passwords) but you have that issue in native apps as well, especially since most native apps actually log in through the Web anyway using oAuth.


>Nativescript could be seen as a more "desktop-proprammer-friendly" fwk of such an approach, where you have the option to use their abstractions to bind to native GUI when you do not want to use Webview as your GUI. The question to ask is IMO if it is beneficial to skip the opportunity to access a local data storage engine, which could also handle resyncing the local model with backend[s]. Most of the benefits of "web programming" will be kept if you opt for Webview GUI, so on that front I am with you quite a bit of the way.

I think regardless of which option appeals most to you or me, there are too many options at the moment. There are so many fundamentally different ways to do things today, and it's causing a ton of fragmentation. Developers don't have skills that line up, we have to learn a lot of different technologies just to make some basic stuff work. As much as App dev is not difficult in terms of the development part, it's all the infrastructure around it that sucks. Setting up store keys, the validation process, publishing, managing updates etc. THere's a lot of administration that goes with that that is all non-trivial to set up the very first time you have to do it.

This stuff has to - and will consolidate into a few core technologies IMHO. But we are at a crossroads today where the software tech hasn't quite caught up with the hardware capabilities and the things that people want to do. Great mobile apps are still built by a small number developers who are the leading edge of their field. In my experience most average developers are struggling with figuring out and choosing a technology to do it effectively and when they do the initial results are usually pretty crappy. It'll take time for these principles to perculate into the mainstream of developers.