If you use the right parts of the stack for the right things, the result is a lean, accessible and interoperable piece of software. That's what the Internet was designed for. Alas, few people care, and in particular, interoperability is actively being opposed.

RE the toilet example, current webdev is more like refusing to build toilets in apartments and instead building them into car seats, because it's 2018, everyone has a car and a driver's license (or, rather, everyone in the population we want to monetize).

FWIW it takes less developer time to make a decent website without Javascript.

Javascript also introduces risks that are non existent in static pages.

Now if theese JS sites were super snappy and worked well offline etc I'd say probably wort it.

But I guess they are often worse that a plain old web page.

- someone who has created static and dynamic webpages since late last millenium