You'll have to come up with proof of a better alternative before you'll get agreement from people like me. Javascript and sandboxed executable code may not be a magic bullet, but it's the bullet we have.

"Lets standardize a better way" doesn't give much to talk about if I don't buy into the issues you have with Javascript and executable code.

If you could give a compelling example of a better way that gives the same freedom I would love to hear it. The alternatives I know of all sacrifice something (speed, interactivity, flexibility, development cost) in the name of getting rid of something it seems most people don't have a fundamental problem with (namely sandboxed executable code).

Oh, I don't want to give all the freedom that JavaScript in the browser gives, and that's the whole point. If we came up with something that allowed the same things, then that would be a pointless exercise. There will be cuts in aspects, some necessary, some intentional.

I don't advocate for a better way to have apps on the web, but to have a better app-less web.

I'm a bit tired to talk about this topic right now. I'm also repeating myself. I talked a lot about JavaScript on HN recently, so you can read there more, and the surround comments have lots of other perspectives. Not everything has been said. Maybe I'll write up a structured and hopefully complete blog post about it some day soon.

I will certainly agree that requiring JavaScript unnecessarily should be frowned on and progressive enhancement should be the norm. A least give user the option of taking on additional security risks associated with Javascript (and WebAssembly) or not (edit: where possible).

Agreed to a point. For some apps user interaction is required, and progressive enhancement isn't possible.

For non-apps though, it's still very important. Articles should not require a JS bundle to load. When JS is used, it should be optimized.

Unfortunately the web seems to be moving away from a progressive enhancement world.

Momentum seems to be with whatever is easiest. JavaScript frameworks, analytics companies, and ad companies would probably all have to make progressive enhancement the default way for that to change.

Let's stick with the reddit example. The up/down vote links could be standard anchors with additional tags <a href="upvote" reload="comment#564534">^</a>. Inline posting could be similar.

It doesn't take much to do 99% of what we want with javascript and server side rendering, we used hacks to do it before javascript so I'm sure we could design something even better. It doesn't sacrifice anything.