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Also, I’m not sure that most websites are about delivering and exploring content. I think most websites are fundamentally about either delivering ads or selling you stuff. “Delivering ads” usually requires JavaScript, and “Selling stuff” can be done without a bunch of JavaScript, but the experience wouldn’t be great.

I don’t dispute the thesis of “web pages today are often way too bloated”, but I think it’s important to be realistic about the problem space. The author calls out JavaScript driven carousels as an example of unnecessary bloat… yet the Amazon.com home page features one such carousel prominently. I doubt they would put it there without A/B testing the heck out of it. To be fair, Amazon is way smarter about it than most in how the page paints and is interactive very quickly, but my point is that it seems to me that most web users want something more than what JavaScript-less HTML and CSS can provide.