No, but only because I used other backend languages and frameworks for that, because there are much better languages suited to those tasks than JS. Especially in the browser. SPAs exist to serve a specific business case, they aren't qualitatively better than what came before.
>And no bundling, so you have tens of <script> tags in the right dependency order to support older browsers? It becomes quite fragile very soon.
Or just use JQuery and some modules.
You make it seem way more complicated than it was, it was never that complicated. It was never nearly as complicated as the current JS ecosystem. Talking about "tens of scripts" when the current status quo is a brittle dependency tree of hundreds, if not thousands, of scripts for even the simplest task is silly.
>The web is entirely backwards compatible, you can do whatever you think is best!
Yes. This is technically true, but unfortunately tech culture has years of ingrained social pressure leading people to believe javascript is a dangerous language that they don't dare approach without ten layers of abstraction protecting them, and the nonexistent business value in doing so, because the ecosystem is dominated by capitalists. The fact that "vanilla js" even exists as a term demonstrates how pernicious this fear has become - there is no "vanilla x" any other language. Only javascript needs a special term for just using the language because of the deep cultural taboo against doing so.
