Well, there is obviously a conflict in UI experience. I can very well see how back/forward breaks the idea of a web "app", because what would backward mean in a classical app, except for maybe undo? I tend to put web addresses in roughly these two categories: those that try to be an app, and those which just present a document. True, inline editing may blur the line, but thats how I try to see it. IOW, I am not mad at someone killing my back/forward buttons if these just dont make any sense in the context of the app they are providing. OTOH, I am pretty pissed if someone steps outside of classic HTML if all they are doing is basically prviding text/images.

Sure, if you’re building Figma, SPA all the way. If it’s a dashboard or a semi-static document, SPAs are misused and that’s when basic functionality gets replaced with JS, but typically in a broken fashion.

> There’s no reason to think SPAs are in any way objectively better in terms of either UX or DX.

No. Not without knowing the use case, the requirements, the users, and all of that. Sometimes I don't need anything beyond a text editor for something I make. Use the right tool for the job.

> I can’t count the number of SPAs that manage to break basic browser functionality like links, back/forward navigation and scrolling. It’s insane.

Yes. With more powerful tools you can fuck more things up, more thoroughly than with less powerful tools. That's not a problem with tools, that's a problem with bad development and design. Assuming that the person who fucked it up that badly would have made a better experience with less powerful tools is almost certainly wrong.