Ask HN: Which is better, a desktop or web application?

For our latest project, we chose Electron because it was the best of both worlds. That way, we can develop using familiar HTML and JS tools but distribute on the desktop with traditional installers and desktop icons. Having a built-in browser in Electron apps means you can control the whole experience and know that your icons, navigation, etc will behave identically on all platforms -- without you having to develop anything platform-specific. You can also build-in any databases or server functions you need inside your Electron app so that your finished software runs entirely offline. We open-sourced our toolkit[0] if that would helpful to you:

[0]https://nebula.mimix.io/

It's usually prudent to ask your users. Maybe their concerns are not your concerns. Maybe they would like to occasionally access your app on their mobile.

Would I download your app, rather than hit a web page? probably not. However I'm probably not your target.

Look at the history of how Facebook dropped their mobile web application in favor of a native iOS application. In the process of doing that, they also invented GraphQL as a replacement for REST API.

Purely anecdotal reasoning, but it’s worth mentioning I think.