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When I said "best" programmer, I meant it more holistically. That's algorithm skills, architecture skills, communication, ability to pick up new things, culture fit, etc etc.

Put that all into an imaginary 1-100 rating: you can get a 60-70 programmer in the bay area, or an 80-90 programmer remote. How many points does being local make up for? That's a question specific to your company, but if it's less than that difference in overall developer quality, remote may be a good call.

Which kind of web apps? Not everyone writes todo apps these days. One of our devs retired last week. There are probably less than 20 devs in the world with his skill set (very specialized geospatial analytics). Even todo apps can require extremely talented developers to work at scale.

Just a couple of points:

First, web apps aren't that difficult, it is true. But that doesn't stop web app startup founders from demanding only the best of the best data structure/algorithmic programmers.

Second, web apps are not even close to being the only kind of programming, suitable for remote work or not.