[0xFACEFEED]

1) Rats nest of non-declarative JavaScript.

2) Rats nest of JavaScript callbacks.

3) Overlapping stylesheets with !important everywhere.

4) Elements used for style not their semantic purpose (<b>, <strong>)

5) Subtle and not-so-subtle browser compatibility issues.

[bugtodiffer]

5) is the only valid reason, the rest has comparable alternative shitty things when using whatever framework

[0xFACEFEED]

No amount of discipline was going to make medium-large websites maintainable back then. Today it's actually possible if the creators know what they're doing. Tooling isn't going to prevent people from doing stupid things.

[wyclif]

Also: using JS for things where HTML and CSS would have been sufficient, creating some of the issues above.

[mediumsmart]

this ^ - and if js at all, then only using a subset which passes jslint.com without any errors or warnings. that the score of any site should be

100 100 100 100 1.1s max paint (mobile) 0ms block 0.0xx max shift A+ headers 0 errors and 0 contrast errors webaim goes without saying of course

[netdevnet]

I agree with HTML+CSS+JS websites being not fine. But to be honest, js callbacks are more of a language thing than a framework thing. You don't need to use frameworks to write promises.