> Progressive enhancement (beyond very small apps) is a challenge to maintain, since UI state needs to be shared between a server runtime and client runtime.

It does? Why? The server is handling the data to be rendered either way, and as I say in response to another comment, rendering the data is as simple as:

    res.end(render(template, data))

> And your comments about shitty execution of web pages and apps could apply to any shitty app. They have nothing to do with client-side JavaScript applications. I expect a better argument than "I once saw a webpage that sucked".

The argument is "you are VC-funded, and taking a 1mil+ dollars to build the Next Big (S|P)aaS. You are spending tons of money on A/B testing, designers, mockups, UI specialists, and your page does not even load for the lowest common denominator - and easiest to manage (static HTML) users of the web?"

The web was built for content-first, not flash.