If you ask me it should be the other way around, do we need web apps at all?

1. Most web "apps" actually only work on Chrome, so there's that. So much for the open, standardized web.

2. Most web apps track the heck out of everything you do.

3. Most web apps are sluggish and use more resources than they should.

4. Most web apps are like Juicero, expensive solutions to non existent problems.

> 1. Most web "apps" actually only work on Chrome, so there's that. So much for the open, standardized web.

This is completely anecdotal, so I'll volunteer my own anecdote: I've used Firefox for years and basically never run into issues. Sometimes a website will say "We don't support your browser", but if you change your user agent it works fine.

> 2. Most web apps track the heck out of everything you do.

So installing a native app with even MORE access to what you do is a better solution? How about Uber tracking you after you get out of your cab? To suggest this is a "web app" problem is false.

> 4. Most web apps are like Juicero, expensive solutions to non existent problems.

Haha, you are SO RIGHT about this one! One of my smell-tests for a web-app is: "Could your website be reasonably replaced with a spreadsheet?"

It's funny because I LOVE spreadsheets, and simply using a spreadsheet is better 99% of the time.

"Bet 98% of the apps on the App Store get a $1k in revenue/month"

That ain't too bad. A handful of apps like that could let a developer live reasonably comfortably.

Hell, if that were true, I'd be making apps. I doubt that any but a small percentage of apps make any money at all.

I meant bet 98% don't make $1k in revenue. my bad

IANAL but the appeal isn't going to fly. In the states this guy would probably be homeless by now tho :o

One word, Blender.

Functional in JavaScript never made sense to me, we don't have immutability in the language. While V8 has made optimisations for short lived objects this doesn't hold true across the board so perf can be quite terrible with "pure" style FP.

Theoretically "pure" code is beautiful, in practice it tends to perform badly especially in languages that don't have value types and copy mechanisms.

Do you have any data to show that this is a real concern with JS?

It may depend on the context, and with some VERY large data models, something like even Redux would be less efficient. TBH though, I find that practicing FP in JS even in a less pure form isn't so bad. I tend to prefer shallow clones as responses in favor over mutations. Though I will mutate an object, when it's exclusively inside a function/module and sealed from the outside so that such mutations are at least in isolation.

Fascinating that these scenes are still thriving, just recently saw "8-Bit Guy"'s postmortem video on writing and shipping a game for C64.