[swiley]

Oh sure yes, 90% of the things people want are really just a few HTML forms and a back end.

My point was that desktop development isn't any harder than web development. Most of what you've mentioned involve adding features and the same features would be just as dificult to implement in a web app.

>but people demand a lot from basic apps of any stripe these days, and as those requirements increase, so does the amount of complexity that developers need to manage at all stages of the pipeline.

I think most of these demands are misunderstood.

RE: "syncing": Most people just want to work with their data offline. Traditionally this was done by interacting with the filesystem rather than a thick client manipuliting the state on a server (like many modern web apps are.) There's no need for "syncing" or complex protocols.