[stephenr]

I found the entire premise of the question weird - s/he asks about what people are using, and then states s/he wants to use two specific things.

"Waiter, what can you suggest for me, I want to eat a fillet mignon?".

As for your view - I agree mostly. I'm definitely in favour of making things entirely in the 'classic' web model, adding javascript to enhance things where it makes sense (some of this now is just polyfilling html5 form controls where they're not native).