Q: "What's better than this stack for application development?"
A: So many things. Cocoa comes to mind.
HTML/CSS/JavaScript were never created to build applications, and it's very apparent when you do so. I've built a lot of web apps, but out of necessity. I think we're going to actually see the opposite trend in software: moving client-server apps away from browser-based solutions and toward native apps. In fact we're already seeing that movement—and I would argue that a big reason behind it is how much writing client apps in JavaScript sucks.
A: So many things. Cocoa comes to mind.
HTML/CSS/JavaScript were never created to build applications, and it's very apparent when you do so. I've built a lot of web apps, but out of necessity. I think we're going to actually see the opposite trend in software: moving client-server apps away from browser-based solutions and toward native apps. In fact we're already seeing that movement—and I would argue that a big reason behind it is how much writing client apps in JavaScript sucks.