I think this is probably true, but I kind of hate it. It's such a staggering waste of computing resources. I don't know, maybe we can get to the point where these apps that include an entire browser are highly optimized but it's still kinda nuts.
Electron apps are slow, but eventually MS or Apple will decide to launch some sort of "integrated web desktop API" that plays well with Electron (and eventually eats its lunch). Seeing the speed boost, the other desktop OSes will do the same and suddenly we are all coding for the web for everything while the guts are rearranged dramatically beneath us.
This happens over and over in tech - like setting up a soundcard in 1995. First we had to futz with config files and IRQ conflicts and then things were Made Nice with "Plug and Play" - this is the step we are at now: Electron makes stuff work without all the futzing. It doesn't matter if it is slower or worse, it is winning and things will move underneath to make it make sense.
The step that next is the not caring: now sound cards just come baked in to the motherboard, hardware conflicts can be managed in software, dynamically resolved or who knows - I don't have to think about it any more. Soon you won't have to worry about performance on desktops because it will be an OS problem to make arbitrary web code run faster on desktops, not developers.
If one were to propose Node.js to a developer 10 years ago, it probably would’ve been seen as a fantasy, but today many production apps run in Node and actually work.
I suspect that with WASM and further development of the Java/Typescript ecosystem, we’ll see highly performant web apps running complex loads in the next 5 years (for better or worse).