Seeing all the JavaScript kiddies rediscover the speed and UX benefits of not using massive front-end JavaScript libraries to display simple web pages in the last few months has been alternatively hilarious and frustrating to me.
I feel it never really was about denying how effective plain web pages are but rather that faced with the choice of a wonderful DX with just JS, and a more difficult day to day with a mix of both, we picked the first. Sometimes at the expense of the end user, yaddi yaddi yadda, etc.
Good solutions for the "have your cake and eat it" scenario with exceptionally good DX are just now reaching some maturity.
