If websites were ad-less and tracking-less, most of them would be nearly JS-less, video-less, cookie-less... Garbage-less.
But most of them are 90% garbage-full, so JS and cookies get all the hate. They are fine; the problem is when people use them with no sense of responsability. Ads should not increase page size more than a 10%; but they usually are more than 90%. Terrible.
No surprise most of us use adblockers.
Sounds like someone made something really wrong.
For that kind of applications, a correct use of JS yields (after first load!) a faster and more responsive user experience than pure HTML. The improvement can be 10x, easily.
But JS is a very powerful tool, and it can make a lot of damage if not used properly. And in-house tools are frequently made by unexperienced people who doesn't know what they are doing. Tragic, but true.
@jgg@qoto.org Partially yes. Partially no. I work were we are told that UIs need to be built in React. Even in-house tools. I spent way too long getting angry at our security dashboard so I can get a list of CVEs to correct. It was slow, unresponsive, and clunky. If it was mostly HTML with a peppering of JS for pagination, I wouldn't be so angry.