This rant is at least ten years out of date, and is at this point entirely unimaginative. More importantly it does not represent where JS ecosystem efforts have been going for 3-5 years. My personal site is built with a JS framework. It’s sent to the client as ‘static’ HTML and CSS. A JS payload is also sent to power (optional) client-side-interactive functionality (e.g. the “copy” button on code snippet blocks).

Meanwhile, I get to use what is easily the best ecosystem of (lowercase) web component / templating tools, hands down. I’ve used more templating tools than I can count, and nothing compares to Vue SFCs, Svelte, or hell, even JSX as much as I loathe it.

I’m a fairly oldschool do-it-in-notepad web developer, not some kid that grew up on JavaScript. I’ve been deeply, deeply skeptical of and hesitant to employ JS-ecosystem tools. The recent work around fairly seamless isomorphic development is slowly but surely winning me over. It’s increasingly addressing my concerns re accessibility, performance, reliability, semantics, ‘letting the browser do what it does best’, etc. All things I deeply, deeply care about, and all things that caused me to rail against JavaScript in the past.