totally understand. I think distribution on the Web is a lot easier than building desktop applications for Linux/Mac/Windows.
Also, sometimes I need to merge pdfs when I'm on my Android device, which would be another target to build an application for. Web makes it easy for me across a huge variety of devices
I use this on all my front end projects and it protects my "host" machine from malicious packages, it's not a silver bullet though; other practices, e.g. good secret management, will help harden your dev environment from these attacks