You think the 0.001% of people who browse with JS disabled are the primary target for such a website?
The link I provided is from Google's cache, it isn't only about visitors with no JS. It means, that's exactly the way Google sees that page. So, what's the use for your "my-awesome-hipster-powered-react" site if it can't even get indexed by search engines and solve its primary purpose of displaying content?
Because you obviously grabbed this number out of thin air, I would like the HN community to know that the actual percentage of users without JS is much closer to 1%[0].
[0] https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2013/10/21/how-many-people-are-missi...
I think the parent comment's exaggeration of the number is bad form for web developers, and goes against the spirit of the web, which I believe is based on the principles of universal access and inclusiveness.
As a web developer, for me the problem is that writing anything modern without JavaScript is a much harder task that only really benefits a small minority of users. I'm unfamiliar with any disabilities that would require JavaScript to be turned off but I could see this being a valid usecase.
That post also implies that the figure is stable.
Your second paragraph is a perfect example of the kind of attitude that I think is problematic. Yes it's more work to accommodate non-JS users. But so is building ramps for people in wheelchairs. The discrimination gets "baked in" to your/our development processes, and you/we justify the discrimination based on the idea that the only ones who will suffer from it are a "small minority".
It's like assuming that everyone uses a mouse. Clearly some don't, and if we develop the web based on that assumption, we're going to leave a lot of folks in the lurch. We should hold ourselves to a higher standard[0].