I remember writing high complexity rich internet applications (knowledge graph editors, tools to align sales territories for companies with 1000+ salespeople, etc.) circa 2005. It was challenging to do because I had to figure out how to update the whole UI when data came in from asynchronous requests, I had to write frameworks a bit like MobX or redux to handle the situation.
Even before that I was making Java applets to do things you couldn't do with HTML, like draw a finite element model and send it to a FORTRAN back end to see what it does under stress, or replace Apple's Quicktime VR plugin, or simulate the Ising model with the Monte Carlo methods.)
What happened around 2015 is that people gave up writing HTML forms and felt that they had to use React to make very simple things like newsletter signups so now you see many SPAs that don't need to be SPAs.
Today we have things like Figma that approach the complex UI you'd expect from a high-end desktop app, but in many ways our horizons have shrunk thanks to "phoneishness" and the idea that everything should be done with a very "simple" (in terms of what the user sees) mobile app that is actually very hard to develop -- who cares about how fast your build cycle is if the app store can hang up your releases as long they like?
Even before that I was making Java applets to do things you couldn't do with HTML, like draw a finite element model and send it to a FORTRAN back end to see what it does under stress, or replace Apple's Quicktime VR plugin, or simulate the Ising model with the Monte Carlo methods.)
What happened around 2015 is that people gave up writing HTML forms and felt that they had to use React to make very simple things like newsletter signups so now you see many SPAs that don't need to be SPAs.
Today we have things like Figma that approach the complex UI you'd expect from a high-end desktop app, but in many ways our horizons have shrunk thanks to "phoneishness" and the idea that everything should be done with a very "simple" (in terms of what the user sees) mobile app that is actually very hard to develop -- who cares about how fast your build cycle is if the app store can hang up your releases as long they like?