Partly agree. It’s misuse of JavaScript, or excessive use of it. JS apps can definitely be built lean and fast. It’s just that people don’t know when to stop.

It seems that the two have a tendency to go hand-in-hand, though.

You can absolutely do a good responsive design in pure HTML+CSS. What seems to happen in practice, though, is pages that appear as flat white if I don't fiddle with my NoScript settings, and that grind on my (admittedly not top-of-the-line) computer if I do.

If it was only JavaScript, we'd be fine. But it's a JavaScript framework, built on some other JavaScript frameworks with tons of dependencies, then an entire new dependency plugin for every little thing you need to do like check if something "is an array".

From a tech perspective, yes.

From a marketing perspective, though, it's not. I saw a startup once where the non-technical cofounders had apparently managed to build a non-dynamic single-page React application as their homepage (basically a basic website but in React ooohhh aaahhh). They were using the fact that they did that as a selling point. Almost all of the non-tech people in the room ate it up completely and praised them for their launch.

Magic... Nobody really knows... It was supposed to be different, responsive (this time, really).

Possibly they are tracking our mouse movements (such is the feeling that their 'responsive design' gives me)