That doesn't make the effort required of a developer to remove an existing JS dependency any easier, though, other than allowing them to see how the site breaks

That doesn't make the effort required of a developer to remove an existing JS dependency any easier, though, other than allowing them to see how the site breaks which can already be done using the F12 dev tools. A lot of sites rely on JS to function even at a basic level these days and I think the parent was saying it's unlikely that that's going to change.