Form submissions and such have been part of HTML for a long time, and map viewing most certainly doesn't need JS. See this comment from 3 years ago:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10872194
Unfortunately the map images in the article there no longer work because Google has decided to "deprecate" that API, but there's absolutely nothing about serving what is essentially a large tiled image that requires the capability to run arbitrary code on the client. In fact, here's a tile URL I just found that still works: http://mt1.google.com/vt/lyrs=y&x=1325&y=3143&z=13
JavaScript is like Flash: useful or even essential for some things, but far too overused these days.
Perhaps a better example is video calling. Definitely can't do that without JavaScript. My point is that disabling JavaScript entirely eliminates several classes of websites. I think it is better to have reasonable limits to JavaScript than make these types of websites impossible.
You're right, that can be a significant problem. Often what I do is to turn JS on and let the page load then turn it off again. When I encounter Smart Alec sites that try to catch people like me out by refreshing JS every few seconds, I either toggle network access to the internet off or capture the text by various other means.
There's always a solution one way or the other.
I also disable javascript by default. And yet none of the websites that I enable javascipt on have essential javascritpy features, but they merely don't present the content in plain html.
> empowers developers to put features that are useful to the user is the primary focus
No, there is and always was a tension between usability and developers putting up new features. If you truly focus on user experience you definitely can't empower developers to invent features, you have to constrain them and force them to follow UX guidelines.