I feel like <noscript> does a fine job at what its meant to do. The article's complaint is that it isn't magic and can't solve all problems, but nothing can.
No, noscript doesn't do a fine job, because it will be handled incorrectly on browsers that fit any situation like the ones on the article's list of examples.
A tiny minority of people that disable javascript does that in a way that is handled correctly.
But writing a page that works by itself and modifying it by scripts will work almost everywhere as long as you add any external dependency in a way that invalidates your script on errors.
But writing a page that works by itself and modifying it by scripts will work almost everywhere as long as you add any external dependency in a way that invalidates your script on errors.