It didn&#x27;t used to be that way.<p>You used to be able to use Delphi or VB6 to make working desktop apps in very short times. I&#x27;m sure other will reminisce about other older desktop techs that were a breeze to use.<p>MS severely dropped the ball with WPF by making it have a very high learning curve just when javascript was really exploding. So not only was it easier to distribute web apps, they were cross platform and it was easier to make them too (although the massive pain of SPAs has changed that).<p>There was also Adobe Flash Builder that very briefly looked like it would be a competitor when Balsamiq was a big new thing, but it never really took off (only other thing I&#x27;ve seen use it is salesforce&#x27;s SOQL tool). At that point everyone hated Adobe though, so it didn&#x27;t have much chance.