Agreed, but this is also due to the population that hn targets ...
Also, as soon as you want to do something that's a bit more complicated than displaying a textarea and a handful of inputs or selects in a profile page, then JS is going to help a improving UX a lot ...
TBH it feels to me that webcomponent pages load faster than Vue/React/Angular sites, so at least that's an interesting compromise.
I agree in theory, but really HN is lacking some features which would make it more enjoyable all which would likely need minimal JS, e.g. sorting, notifications, and some better way to read multi-page discussions. You will likely never read this comment since HN has no notification concept!
Neither sorting nor notifications require any JavaScript whatsoever. As an example, old Reddit has sorting and notifications and handles them all server-side with no JavaScript required. “A better way to read multi-page discussions” is too vague for me to comment on.
Also, as soon as you want to do something that's a bit more complicated than displaying a textarea and a handful of inputs or selects in a profile page, then JS is going to help a improving UX a lot ...
TBH it feels to me that webcomponent pages load faster than Vue/React/Angular sites, so at least that's an interesting compromise.