For me the difference isn't the amount of JS, it's what the JS is doing. A page that requests JSON and renders it to HTML in the frontend is fundamentally diffe

For me the difference isn't the amount of JS, it's what the JS is doing. A page that requests JSON and renders it to HTML in the frontend is fundamentally different from one that uses JS for basic interactivity. Both uses absolutely have their place and there are products that would be noticeably worse for the end user if all HTML was rendered on the server. I've just learned to have a high bar there, the complexity grows quickly making bugs more likely and debugging more difficult.