alt Hacker NewsI think you're comparing hand-writing an HTML/CSS interface to the WYSIWYG form editor of Qt or Visual Studio? Because hand writing a GUI in Qt/QML/C++/.NET is not any easier than writing it in HTML. There are tons of boilerplate and special markup to learn. The magical editor just hides all the plumbing from you.
I'll grant you that the lack of good WYSIWYG designers for working on web/electron apps is appalling, it's like RAD peaked in 1998 with VB6 and it's been downhill ever since.
Not having to round trip through ACL/security checks.
Not having to deal with state management.
Not having to deal with browser compatibility issues (and mobile vs desktop).
Not having to deal with weird input validation stuff dual layer stuff that is inherent in web apps, but not a big deal elsewhere.
Not having to deal with laggy and unstable connections at the UI layer.
Etc, etc.