You can always continue to write JS as a static piece of code in your HTML, use raw CSS, and use imperative, lifecycle-agnostic libraries like jQuery; there is nothing stopping you, and nothing about that has changed. It’s just that there are better options now.
I do it for a living so that's not really an option. That's also where my perspective is written from, as an industry full stack dev turned contractor, commenting on the past. I wasn't trying to say one way is better than the other, it has just been a surprising outcome that's all.
I think it's also worth remembering the context of old web tech. Computers were slow, javascript wasn't performant and backward compatability was still a huge issue. We did our best to use as little JS as possible.
When phones came along, computers got faster, and flash et al were earmarked for deprecation, there was a void of opportunity for javascript powered frontend frameworks, and the web industry started to build and embrace UI tooling albeit with a new lexicon.
