> HTML was meant to be used for static documents
So? What does that have to do with "technologies the browser offers us"? The browser now offers a thorough set of DOM bindings in JS, which is definitely not meant to be used for static documents. Quite the opposite.
> CSS (single file, linked to by all documents) was meant to add styling to all those documents.
That's still how it works?
> JS was meant to add simple interactivity to documents
Before the DOM, sure
> Navigating between documents reloads everything and no state is kept (other than user sessions of course)
Which was horrible UX
Everything you go on to say seems to be some puritanical bend on never evolving software. The platform and its usage have co-evolved, and now we have a complete app distribution platform where a 1MB bundle can deliver equivalent functionality to an app taking hundreds of megabytes on the phone platform, except this 1MB bundle can support screen sizes from the smallest phones to the largest desktops.
I genuinely don't understand what kind of complaint this is:
> We've built layers on top of layers of abstraction
Should we go back to writing Assembly? Wait, isn't this a higher level than machine code? Wait, isn't that still interpreted by the CPU into microcode? ...
> Instead of coming up with a new way of building actual applications
Honestly, I don't get it. We did come up with a way of building actual applications, it's called the browser, using HTML/CSS/JS. I don't care that some people write it in a file called .jsx or .tsx - is using TypeScript also offensive to you? - I still deliver a static HTML/CSS/JS bundle to users. That seems like the ultimate validation of the original concepts in those technologies, they are so expressive that we're able to circumvent the need to start from scratch yet again, instead evolving themselves to be a performant, compact app delivery platform.
> It's a constant fight and a gigantic waste of everyone's time
The gigantic waste of everyone's time is thinking that starting from scratch will solve more issues than it will introduce. Good luck writing a new platform that supports not only many classes of devices and small packages, but also doesn't kill accessibility features, screen readers, and billions of man-hours of development that still works today.
This is better than it was. Not sure what kind of person simultaneously argues "we can do better" and then rails against the evolution of usage of technologies that... made them better