> The dream of a web where the server simply sent data, and the client chose how to display it, is totally dead
When did you have such a web?
The web used to be completely server side, so you could only receive formatted HTML/CSS/JS and you would need to scrape this page to get information.
Today you have (or can have) APIs and some sites are cleanly server/client. It is much, much, much better than it was if you want to consume data. At least there is a framework for that (not always available), as opposed to before when there was none.
When did you have such a web?
The web used to be completely server side, so you could only receive formatted HTML/CSS/JS and you would need to scrape this page to get information.
Today you have (or can have) APIs and some sites are cleanly server/client. It is much, much, much better than it was if you want to consume data. At least there is a framework for that (not always available), as opposed to before when there was none.