It’s not so much that there’s a place for both rather than both necessarily exist as two points in the same space.
But the reality is that more websites than not these days will send you many megabytes of JS, mainly for the purpose of tracking you and extracting money/time from you, under the guise of “user experience”.
So when I see some of those rare people who still actually care about quality, speed, performance, accessibility, etc I make sure to appreciate their work.