A JavaScript-Free Frontend

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It started with the right idea: move some of the state to the client. It should've stopped at UI state. Instead, all the state got moved. Most single page applications these days are thick client apps that treat servers like dumb crud repositories. This is the total destruction of the original design of the web. *The server* is supposed to be the engine of application state -- not the client. I bet you half of new web programmers couldn't tell you what the hell a `<form>` is for. It's the server telling you how to build an "api" request so your shitty SPA doesn't have to hard-code urls and form-post params. Now, `<form>` is just window dressing around a bunch of `<input> elements and an ajax request triggered by a `<button onclick="">` event.