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I don't think he needs to acknowledge how contrived his solution might be or provide a real-world use case. The article very well could be taken as inspiration to approach problems from different angles.

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Indeed. It's clearly not meant to be a realistic or recommended approach. It's a practice of lateral thinking, an experiment to see how much of a problem you can solve with limited set of tools. It's easy to throw in every library, framework, technology at a problem, and they might not be necessary. Sometimes approaching a problem from this unusual perspective can yield good solutions. Often times, it's messy and hacky, but in either case you learn a lot along the way.

Yes. Folks with an "enabling attitude" (as Martin Fowler puts it so well - https://martinfowler.com/bliki/SoftwareDevelopmentAttitude.h...) would probably tend to appreciate exploratory exercises that expand horizons or demonstrate new ways of using old tools, while folks with a "directing attitude" might tend to dislike them.

Oh like pure academic exercises..

Javascript-free golf.

How complex of a web app can you make without using javascript.

That sounds like a lot of fun and good exercise! The css would be terrifying though.

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