The web has been distinct & unique & closer to "the language of the gods" for being much better, more pro-user than the old industrial-computing compiled ways. Many webdevs got their start from view-source (and many would have been lost to computing if we were just another compiled blackbox). The aliveness of the web contrasts to the dead programming variety. The erosion of this aliveness & legibility has been mourned, and should be. It is worth fighting for the user.

I don't think your argument has merit, that merits can be ignored because this is how computers always used to be. Wasm's return to the dark times of industrialized blackbox computing will cut off the best users from the joy of being closer to the machine that they had on the web, and that return to darkness is a sad plight for mankind, even if that's how it always used to be. I treasure the light of the open alive web, and hope somehow it can survive this voyage into shadow.