Billions of people are on the internet now, vs 20 years ago. I dare say millions of lives have been saved (due to various things) in the past 20 years, due to the things built and deployed on the web.
We may have failed at some abstract notion of craftsmanship or performance efficiency. But we as an industry shipped. We shipped a lot, actually. A lot of it also sucked. But not enough to say the whole industry was a failure, IMHO.
What are you having difficulty understanding? I'll be happy to try help.
> The web is slower than ever.
No it isn't.
> Desktop apps 20 years ago were faster than today's garbage.
Some are, some aren't. For the same thing they clearly aren't. A typewriter makes your PC of 20 years ago look glacial garbage, if that's your standard.
> We failed.
Speak for yourself. Computers are used far more often, for more things, and by more people than they were 20 years ago, and nothing they used to be used for has been replaced by something else. You'll always have the get off my lawn types, but you did in the 2000s from the curmudgeons stuck in the 80s too.
You assessment has no impact. Nobody disagrees with the notion that programmers trade performance for reduction in complexity or better productivity. This isn't some astounding discovery, it's a tired old gripe that doesn't add anything.
The web is slower than ever. Desktop apps 20 years ago were faster than today's garbage. We failed.