>"Before X people were ok without X" is a tautology.
No, it's not.
Sometimes new techniques appear without anybody feeling there was a problem in the first place.
Other times they appear after people struggle and curse their way without them.
"Before X people were ok without X" only refers to the first case, so it's not a tautology applicable to all cases before X.
E.g. people always struggled with webpage layout, and knew they needed a solution X to appear, even before an X emerged.
Apart from those who generated css dynamically. And those who hated the situation enough to create preprocessors to improve their lives.
"Before X people were ok without X" is a tautology.