> The optimal solution will always be to make sure that basic functionality works without JavaScript.<p>That's not the world we live in.<p>Already since the inception of the Web, the browser has been perceived as far more potent then simple rendering of hypertext. Rich Web Applications have always been part of the larger vision. It's the idea that you can deliver entire functional applications - interactive user experiences - to the end-user without having to install anything on your computer.<p>Remember Flash, Silverlight, Java Web Applets? All of these were attempts to fill a functional gap that browsers lacked through the 90's and 00's. The implementation of browser API's over the decades have allowed for the development of rich web experiences. For better or worse, the gateway to interact with these API's is JavaScript. Even so, the language is by and large inconsequential to a degree: the same basic concerns - security, accessibility - would always remain if browser API's were implemented in any other language.<p>> And the fact of the matter is that the majority of frontend developers aren't developing applications for niche markets with specific JavaScript requirements, rather they are developing regular websites, applications that in the end are just plain simple HTML.<p>There's no clear separation between "applications" and "websites". It's a spectrum. There are applications that render static hypertext, and there are websites with components that really act like applets. Hybrids do exist. And they are a completely valid business case.<p>Yes, accessibility and security are concerns. But treating them as a categorical imperative while ignoring the diversity and complexity of what the Web has grown into, well, that just won't do.