I browse with NoScript blocking JavaScript by default as too many web developers (or their managers) have violated my trust to not do Dodgy Stuff over the years. Unfortunately I don't believe there will ever exist accurate numbers of the true portion of people who browse a subset of the web with JavaScript disabled, at least partially because many of those same folks will prevent the means used to collect the data in the first place.

It's no place for me to dictate how you do your development, so I won't do that. It is however my personal opinion that websites should depend on HTML and CSS, and progressively enhance functionality with sprinkles of JavaScript. The vast majority of websites are not interactive applications, and I think modern web development practices could do with something of a hard reset.

I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to decide how things ended up where they are now and whether it's a good thing for them. Personally I think it's comical and horrifying just how much compilation goes on in projects written in that particular interpreted language these days!