Hmm? In 90s and 2000s most web frameworks did not rely on JS at all, they were completely server-side. I.e. the server renders a page. User clicks a button, browser collects data from a form and sends request to the server. The server updates its state and renders a new page. There are some downsides to that approach, but it can be pretty good if you just need to get some information and/or let user browse a data collection.

Compile-to-JS approach started to appear in mid 2000s.