I think they mean you don't need ruffle if you can just export to web. The programming environment can be anything, but adding ruffle in the middle when it really doesn't need to be there, does indeed feel a bit tacky. Flash used to be necessary to add functions to browsers that were otherwise impossible, but these days you can do anything in a browser.

Rather a warts-and-all open web than a pay-to-play walled garden where you have to pay the feudal lord a tax for sharecropping on their land.

They are pretty simple, like in flash. You add a script to a timeline or a object amd if that frame gets played, the script gets executed.