I think this is really the key point here. Yes, use JavaScript when it's appropriate and makes the site/app better, or when it's necessary for the thing to fun

I think this is really the key point here. Yes, use JavaScript when it's appropriate and makes the site/app better, or when it's necessary for the thing to function. Obviously something using your camera or microphone or what not should use JavaScript and might rely on it to function. But if the site or app is meant to do something that'd work perfectly fine without JavaScript (or with progressive enhancement and a non JavaScript fallback), make it like that instead. When you're delivering megabytes worth of scripts and relying on JavaScript only functionality for what's essentially a blog (read, many news sites and content platforms now), something is really wrong. The people at the likes of Reddit, Wikia, Medium, and a fair few news sites seem to be trying to deliver a simple product with enough technology to launch a space shuttle.