Don't forget too that for all the arguments about obfuscated or complex JS today there have been many of the same arguments for as long as server side scripting has been in use, too. The web has long been more than just "simple documents" that are easily View Sourced. That's always been part of the Web's longevity and dominance versus stricter cousins like Gopher.

It's interesting that in some ways today's JS heavy client apps are more open than similar server side apps from even just a couple years ago: obfuscated code is still viewable client side and browsers are good at providing deminified views in browser dev tools, and if sourcemaps are left in then you can jump directly to the unobfuscated/deminified sources in browser dev tools. Plus, most communications between chunky JS apps and their servers increasingly use friendly REST protocols, which again is its own sort of win for discoverability and friendliness to an informed user poking around inside of how things work.