[h4ny]

I have been using NoScript for years and I find calling it "perfectly usable" is a bit of a stretch at least for my use case. I can only see it being "perfectly usable" if you only visit mostly the same sites most of the time and have already enabled whatever you need to enable.

I visit new websites all the time because of HN and Reddit, and without JavaScript many sites just don't work or look too broken for me to want to read anything. Unless we collectively decide to stop using buttons instead of anchors for navigation and stop having external, unrelated JavaScript blocking the actual site (that, sometimes funny enough, doesn't require JavaScript to function), it's not going to get any better.

I went through a phase where I think JavaScript is bad and have used CSS instead of JavaScript for a lot of things (mostly because I enjoy writing CSS). The thing is if you have ever tried developing any substantial and moderately complex feature for an actual product with CSS instead of JavaScript, while keeping them readable, maintainable and scalable, you will realize that they are good for different things and talking about them in a mutually exclusive way isn't helpful.

Both CSS and JavaScript are constantly evolving, I agree with you that there are now things that we should do with CSS instead of JavaScript and increasingly more so.