It’s super easy to create. And you distribute it on your own, so it’s basically like an installer exe on Windows. In my mind it’s one step above only offering source code.
I’m curious, what makes AppImage a good choice for the lazy developer? Is it easier to create?
The appimage is basically just git clone -> make -> make install DESTDIR=/path/to/AppDir -> wget appimagecreationtool and finally appimagecreationtool /path/to/AppDir and that's it you have your appimage.
appimagecreationtool being several tools that can create the appimage from an AppDir, like linuxdeploy, linuxdeploqt, go-appimage, etc
And that on itself isn't complex either, it if basically running ldd on the binary, then copy those libraries into the AppDir and finally run patchelf to patch the paths in the binaries and libraries, suyu uses a deploy script instead of using those tools, which I've recently forked and began expanding.
I don't know how easy it is to make a flatpak or snap, but I do know the dev of zen browser hates dealing with the flatpak and iirc right now the flatpak is outdated as result.
EDIT: Also lite-xl has been making a flatpak for like 2 years and it isn't ready yet.