Also, for Java there's JavaFX (a de-facto standard UI toolkit for Java), which is very nice to work with.
The ancient history of the web, clearly, is different, but the modern web stack, both in terms of specs (WHATWG HTML/W3C HTML5 and related standards) and modern browsers are very much engineered for applications, not just classic documents, as a primary use case.
Yet, what they fail to realize is they are comparing a webpage to an application. An application contains information about the state it's in. Handling the application state has always remained complex and it has been two way coupling to the presentation layer making life more difficult.
The latter is why Javascript is perceived to be "over engineered" by people viewing it nothing short of "fairy dust on ugly document pages" which is absolutely incorrect way of viewing application development.
I used to be the biggest Javascript skeptic but once I realized the intent behind React/Redux/Vue.js, it changed my perspective and have started treating it with more weight and respect.
Once that paradigm shift happened in my perception, I found it a lot easier to navigate and endure the fragmented tooling and endless variations of npm modules.
Because I realized that it's going to get better eventually and it's here to stay. Young people aren't learning Java & using Maven on Eclipse or Netbeans anymore. They are on Atom or Visual Code, writing Javascript.
Javascript is essential knowledge, along with AWS. Software engineering has changed in the past 20 years like it or not.
I think we'll get there eventually but until a native toolkit presents an interface as easy to use as the web developers are going to take the path of least resistance.
Like Qt did with QML? http://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qml-tutorial1.html
I've done web UI dev. I've also written code using GTK, Qt, Windows, Swing and JavaFX. A good modern UI toolkit like JavaFX or Qt blows the web stack out of the water on almost every metric. Developer productivity, correctness, speed ... you name it.
> webapps are essentially a pile of ugly hacks on top of a document rendering engine
That's your own opinion. You claimed Java Swing & FX was the correct way and that thin clients like Electron is wrong. I disagree.
If Swing was meant to do UI then it's probably the most awful and inefficient way to do it.
If Web was not meant to do UI but it's the fastest and more efficient to work with than Java.
It's a matter of opinion but with starkly different development experiences. Sure, you can build using Java Swing/FX but you are going to get a completely different demographic and developer culture...one that is still ingrained in the era it was released.