I&#x27;ve observed that suggesting that JS isn&#x27;t needed for most pages is one of the more reliable ways to get downvoted on HN. This is usually acco9mpanied with a complaint that their &quot;web apps&quot; need JS, similar to the &quot;JS off will break most sites&quot; fallacy that you mentioned.<p>The people making those claims probably <i>believe</i> that everything would break without JS, because they are looking at it from the perspective of a business or designer. If you consider your own site to be &quot;broken&quot; if the analytics&#x2F;tracking doesn&#x27;t work, or the fad &quot;UX&quot; effects are not rendered, they it&#x27;s easy to believe that JS should be mandatory.<p>This point of view is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of what the web is. HTML is more concerned with semantic abstractions than the specifics of how a page renders (use a pdf if you want to control the layout). This was an important design choice because it recognizes that the <i>client</i> is responsible for the rendering, which is free to completely ignore the <i>suggestions</i> made by the page.<p>Unfortunately, far too many people don&#x27;t want to accept that they don&#x27;t actually have control over the browser.