It's called Electron and it shouldn't have been used for building desktop apps in the first place. I presume it was built as an inside joke when people were joking about web browsers becoming the new OS.
That said, it allows companies to use cheap web developers to build (previously more pricey) desktop apps, so it's used everywhere now. It's good enough to make money, but obviously using the wrong tool for the job will make some aspects of the experience worse.
Since most consumers hate working with the buggy software on their computer anyway, the loss for a company in making it slightly worse by introducing delay is negligible.
