He took it too far, granted, but overall there's a valid point. By coincidence, I'm writing an applicant tracking tool in rails+react now, and I also wrote one in perl about 16 years ago.

The modern app uses so many javascript libraries, 3rd party fonts, and is generally just so... ouch.

I remember demoing the perl app internally at my first job, and in many cases our page could render the page about as fast as it took to click. Our boss thought it was a static html demo just based on how fast it was.

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.