With the way PWA are currently working, their performance will never be even close to what you can do by building a native application. This is especially true for games and generally anything that has complex UI and thus requires multiple threads in order to work properly.
Either web browsers or mobile operating systems need a fundamental change in the way they work for PWA vs Native to be comparable in terms of performance.
Soon, there will be no real difference between the capabilities of a native app vs those of a PWA.
I can always tell the difference. And many other people can tell the difference, although they aren't sure exactly how it's called and why some apps feel less smooth and look less polished than others.
I always know when an application I download from the store was built with something like Cordova. You can feel the laggy way the webview scrolls, where the whole application is rendered.
Also, this seems really weird:
your native-like applications using JavaScript, without having to go through difficult build steps
Are you saying that projects which end up being a PWA don't have a complex building step? You even mention Vue CLI: there's your difficult build step.
The tone of the whole post seems to somehow put JavaScript and web development “above” developing native applications. With no explanation and no good rationale you conclude that people prefer working in JavaScript instead of building native apps in different languages, and that PWA will somehow save us from... what exactly?
Native applications aren't going anywhere anytime soon. Improving your web app and making it as best as possible is obviously a good thing, but thinking that this somehow replaces a native application in every aspect is just plain delusional.
With the way PWA are currently working, their performance will never be even close to what you can do by building a native application. This is especially true for games and generally anything that has complex UI and thus requires multiple threads in order to work properly.
Either web browsers or mobile operating systems need a fundamental change in the way they work for PWA vs Native to be comparable in terms of performance.
I can always tell the difference. And many other people can tell the difference, although they aren't sure exactly how it's called and why some apps feel less smooth and look less polished than others.
I always know when an application I download from the store was built with something like Cordova. You can feel the laggy way the webview scrolls, where the whole application is rendered.
Also, this seems really weird:
Are you saying that projects which end up being a PWA don't have a complex building step? You even mention Vue CLI: there's your difficult build step.
The tone of the whole post seems to somehow put JavaScript and web development “above” developing native applications. With no explanation and no good rationale you conclude that people prefer working in JavaScript instead of building native apps in different languages, and that PWA will somehow save us from... what exactly?
Native applications aren't going anywhere anytime soon. Improving your web app and making it as best as possible is obviously a good thing, but thinking that this somehow replaces a native application in every aspect is just plain delusional.
These are the arguments that have usually resulted in choosing native so far. Dev pain is ignored.
PWA can replace for other gains but pros can see (little details, ordering, performance, render etc).
The gap is closing for most infoapps.