Admittedly, I'm not a huge user of mobile web (I'm not an iPhone user either, I'm still using a Pixel 4a). However, I am absolutely not going to defend extreme

Admittedly, I'm not a huge user of mobile web (I'm not an iPhone user either, I'm still using a Pixel 4a). However, I am absolutely not going to defend extremely heavy javascript content either. There needs to be a balance, and as your linked article mentions it will vary a lot depending on the demographics of the audience. The original article though was not a good critique of any of that (your linked article is much better). Even so a lot of work has been done to counter a bunch of the problems with doing everything with React. SSR while not a panacea, goes some distance to solving the problem.