[bandrami]

Sadly nowadays sites will send javascript which contains a request to fetch more javascript which contains a request to fetch more javascript which renders an html element which... wait for it... requests more javascript. This sounds like it's an exaggeration but no.

At least on newer browsers we're no longer universally loading a javascript interpreter written in javascript (though sometimes we still are!)

[senttoschool]

A lot of the JS calling for more JS is third party services that don't block render.

For web apps, what matters most is above the fold load speed + time to interactive.

In the era when React got popular but Next.js hasn't yet, we had really slow performing sites because it did exactly what you said. Then people finally figured out that pure client-side rendering apps are too slow so people started switching to server side rendering. Non-interactive websites switched to just static websites that load from CDNs.

Modern web apps and modern static websites are in a much better state than the 2014 - 2018 era.

[bandrami]

I take your point that more-recently designed sites have moved away from this antipattern but there's still a lot of the Web that has that mid-teens "hey bro I see you like javascript so I put some javascript in your javascript" mentality.