Similarly Facebook is just fine without the app and I'm happy with it. It has notifications etc. I'd like it if it was offline first but I'm more than happy with it as is.
As a counterpoint, I'm reading and commenting in this thread using a dedicated native app for reading HN. I find the whole experience to be better. Loading HN in a mobile browser is just painful by comparison.
"To read news on this site, you must give permission to:
Your phone
Your camera
All your files
"
I've never seen that on a web app, but it's de rigeur for native mobile.
Meanwhile webapps can potentially report on everything you do that touches your browser and at most you might have to acknowledge a cookie stored on your browser.
News readers requesting that level of access is bad, but at least they tell you when they're invading your privacy.
I don't want push notifications from every site, but in this case it's valuable.
I wish it worked offline-first, but I know it's something they're looking at.