Feels similar in a way to owning/leasing a car vs getting a taxi/uber everywhere. Depending on how much / how often you need it, one can be better suited than the other, or both depending on certain scenarios.
Progressive enhancement all the way, HN is a great example of this, focuses on its core functionality and slightly enhances things with JS. There's the argument for modern web not having to reload a page, but we were reloading pages on 56kb dial up.
Blame abstractions, and the fact that we expect a higher graphical polish to our programs and even just the desktop. Booting a Raspberry Pi straight into terminal is pretty quick.