[cblconfederate]

Most of the "client"/desktop software does the same things that it did in 1997. Most/all of the 'advanced' features such as AI/voice recognition are done server-side because reasons.

If the quality of desktop software was going up, it would be doing more than it did in 1997. I don't think it does, in fact it is being dumbed down to look like mobile software (which is inherently lower quality due to limited UI). So how come the quality is going up but the user benefit (i.e. time it saves) has not changed?

[Bilal_io]

Do you think web development is anywhere near what it was 20 years ago? Or even 10 years ago? It has definitely advanced a lot. We're now able to do things we were never able to do back then. Now the browser can run a whole cad application, Photoshop, advanced 3d games and complex UI that we weren't able to compose before.

[cblconfederate]

> Do you think web development is anywhere near what it was 20 years ago

why not compare web dev to where desktop was 20 years ago. The question from the user perspective is not whether this or that type of development is getting better, but whether software offers us new affordances today, which it does, but most of them rely on server-side processing and cloud data.

I think you bring up a great example. Which kind of application has gotten better than its past desktop counterparts because of the improvements in javascript? (counterexample: we lost Flash)