Okay, then yes, we were using terms differently. I consider web apps to be a subset of web sites (which is the standard usage as far as I knew), and thus I thought you were claiming that JavaScript should not be a requirement for any web site, including web apps. But you're using "web site" to mean web sites which aren't web apps, and in that case, I do agree.
I disagree with several claims you make later in that comment, but since I think I've addressed our primary disagreement I will leave it at that.
There's motherfuckingwebsite.com but the tone of that site is very adversarial, I think one that lays out the reasoning in a noncombative way would be more successful at reaching some of these people.
There's also this post, that goes into it somewhat: http://allinthehead.com/retro/367/why-is-progressive-enhance... - also, Brad Frost has some posts about this.
I was refering specifically to websites, not webapps.
> It's really not the end of story, and it's not your call except for your own web apps. JavaScript is an integral part of the platform that is the web, just like HTML and CSS. You might as well make the argument that "requiring a web browser for your app is not okay, end of story."
That analogy makes absolutely no sense, nor does your comparison to CSS. JS is an entirely different class of dependency than either CSS or web browsers.
JS is turing-complete, has a significantly bigger attack surface (both in terms of vulnerabilities and in terms of tracking), is much, much harder to optimize for a low-powered device than HTML and CSS, and so on.
Further, the web browser is a necessity to view something on the web. It is well understood, it is easy to optimize, and it is widely deployed. JS is no such 'required dependency' - and you should not make it one, when it can be done just fine without.
> Things were a lot different 10 years ago, and perhaps your reluctance to update your understanding less than once per decade might explain some of your views. You may as well be saying "making a store than can only be accessed over the Internet is not okay, end of story, we all collectively understood this 25 years ago."
The support/compatibility landscape for JS has not changed in those 10 years. The types of non-JS clients are still the same, the reasons for progressive enhancement are still the same. The only thing that has changed is standardization.
"Old" is not the same as "obsoleted". Unless you can come up with a concrete reason as to why this knowledge has been obsoleted throughout the past 10 years, it still applies.
And I'm getting a little tired of these poorly fitting analogies, you're using them as a crutch.