Initial server-side rendering is still an option. User will be able to read the page, at least. And if URLs use a sane scheme, navigation would work too
Should every chat app have a non-JS fallback option? Do we need to implement all color scheme, layout and templating tools in pure CSS?
Facetiousness aside, the web is most definitely not just text based anymore. Whether we like it or not, the web is now in part visual (and aural) and is becoming increasingly moreso. This is not a bad thing. It provides a platform for rapidly developing and deploying applications that cover the full gamut of uses we have thought up for the personal computer.
Using JS to simply display static content is overkill and not the best use of the technology and it is absolutely correct to say that this is better served by using Plain Old HTML. That is not the entirety of the web anymore and the more I see this argument that every web app must support a text only interface the more it sounds to me like an argument for every television show and movie to be produced as a radio drama with pictures.
Is it really that hard to add "We're sorry but your page did not load correctly" ?
I suppose I should have more verbosely indicated the facetiousness of the first few rhetorical questions but they do serve a point.
That's exactly the use-case of server-side JavaScript! Write a small library to build curl commands; use it in both the web page's JS and on the server, with a small shim on each. 1¼ times the work.
Just implement it as a regular form-based application, then add some JavaScript which Ajax-submits the form data and loads in the generated curl command on each keystroke.
(Or you could use server-side JS and share code on the client and server)