Trying get started on the only goddamn framework I could find for creating HTML-and-Javascript apps which doesn't install between 200 and 1700 megabytes of files every time I want to create a new project, and then suddenly finding myself unable to do anything with it for a couple of hours because Github abruptly descended into an all-systems-red status in realtime, and the framework I was looking at depended on Github for everything from templates to installing the current set of binaries to the documentation website, really makes me feel like we should just go back to CLIs, technologically speaking.
Or at least like I should bite the bullet and open the HTML files in my browser for some of the things I want to do, because that at least I can guarantee will still work without needing to phone home to Github, install a half-gigabyte or three per-project just to debug something for a bit, or clutter the settings directory with Cache And Settings For An Entire Extra Web Browser, Per App. godddd.
(For the record, my use-cases are "manipulate some text and copy it to the clipboard", "make a single call to a website's API and then report the result", and "run something else using the OS's normal systems", and my priorities are 1. cross-platform, 2. being able to load it without a web browser's Everything including calls to however-many-other places on the Internet because of whatever else I happen to be doing with my browser, or each app storing megabytes of cache and settings-data for 20 kilobytes of HTML, CSS, and Javascript, and 3. I can just throw something together and have it work, like the mere fact that I have to make "a project" in order to make use of nw.js is already pushing the amount of effort required to make the things I'm doing with this, even without the "half a gigabyte in each project" factor. With Microsoft's Internet-Explorer-bound HTA, I could make an HTML file and it would Just Work, within IE's limitations. I'm going with HTML-and-Javascript specifically so that I don't need to learn something entirely new, because again, just finding something that can do these things is turning into a much bigger project than the combined things I actually want to do with it!!)