[wwweston]

"I don't buy that this is a step backwards."

Moving from a hardware independent web to one where a full experience would be limited to a few "where its currently at" hardware platforms isn't a step backwards? Heck, while you're at it, why don't we just specify an iOS, Android, and Windows web only?

You're also, by the way, talking about the decline if not the death of a view-source web, a semantic web, and a hypermedia focused web, and probably some other things I'm missing.

By all means, feel free to write native client-server apps for any reason that pleases you, whether it's that you don't like JavaScript as a language or are working on something that truly demands native speed. Just don't advocate destroying the features that have made the web successful.