I've had similar experiences, except it used to be PHP for me back in the day, rather than perl - I recall a servicedesk system, as well as a purchase order app

I've had similar experiences, except it used to be PHP for me back in the day, rather than perl - I recall a servicedesk system, as well as a purchase order approval system, amongst many others. Not a single line of JS in sight! But some of us never abandoned server-side rendering - I work a lot with ASP.NET Core MVC, and it's great; I'm very productive with it. But I do add Javascript on top here and there, where it adds value.