The problem with finding really great hackers who want to do client-side coding is that a huge percentage of the work required to implement such apps is boring crap: compatibility testing, look-and-feel review, installer authoring, and collection of client configurations from issue reports. You can implement more features in less time when you deliver thin-client solutions.
Also, the knowledge required to deploy apps to each of your target platforms are fairly different, and tend to be developed to the exclusion of each other. A great Mac OS software engineer is unlikely to know Windows inside and out, and a Windows guru isn't likely to know or care much about Linux. Linux folks are, well, an altogether different bunch.
A huge percentage of the work required to implement web apps is boring crap: browser testing, working around bugs for quirks in different browsers, look and feel review, screwing around with stuff in five different languages / formats just to do something trivial (i.e. Javascript, CSS, HTML, Python, SQL) ...
I really don't think there are many web developers that can pound out an interactive web GUI with the speed that I can bang out a cross-platform desktop app with a reasonable toolkit. There's a natural bias here towards web apps since this is a web-app community, but there are a lot of great developers out there that like working on desktop stuff.
@webwright -- feel free to contact me. I know a lot of people from the KDE world that do cross-platform apps; I could try to put you in touch with some people.
You're right, of course; doing full-stack development, no matter the target platform, involves a lot of unsexy busywork. Browser incompatibilities are an issue as well, and there are certainly a number of layers of technology beneath any finished application.
That being said, I don't think it's fair to argue that desktop apps are easier to develop, test, and deploy than their online counterparts. Furthermore, information-sharing features that are trivial to implement via the web can be rather more complicated to build into a desktop tool.
Both metaphors definitely have their advantages. There are things that are trivial in one setting that are painful in the other. I'm not trying to argue for one or the other being altogether better; I think that's really context and user specific and as I've said before, I definitely think it's easier to build a business around web technologies.
To tie this back to the original topic: great desktop hackers can throw together desktop apps quickly, and know the quirks for developing cross platform (just like great web hackers know browser quirks). In contrast to most of the crowd here, I'm pretty darn good at desktop (and server / systems) programming, and mediocre at web programming, so I just see the other side of the coin.
@op: Have you considered hiring someone who develops AIR applications for the client software? I'd imagine AIR developers are more in the YC-Hacker-mold because the boring things mentioned above are abstracted by the runtime.
All except the look-and-feel bit. Mac users want apps to have the Mac look-and-feel, though perhaps Windows and Linux users aren't as adamant about it, so maybe a Mac-ish look-and-feel can be the common denominator. Also many users wouldn't want to install the AIR runtime.
Either way they have to install something (either your app or the AIR runtime). At least installing the AIR runtime once, gives them access to other AIR applications as well.
Also, the knowledge required to deploy apps to each of your target platforms are fairly different, and tend to be developed to the exclusion of each other. A great Mac OS software engineer is unlikely to know Windows inside and out, and a Windows guru isn't likely to know or care much about Linux. Linux folks are, well, an altogether different bunch.