In my view what happened was usability and security suffered. See for example, https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvekey.cgi?keyword=JavaScript

I have no problem with JavaScript itself, it allows developers to build some amazing web applications. What I object to is the default use of JS for every web site. I would rather see JS limited to a small set of trusted sites and HTML (with server side rendering if needed) for everyone else.