Interesting read. Many web applications today rely on client-side rendering, which can perform poorly. Why should users wait several seconds for a page to download, only to wait several more while it renders? In my case, I often have to enable JavaScript and reload the page because I block unknown JavaScript by default.

Another problem is when a web app aggressively probes for information such as installed extensions, as LinkedIn does. That can make the site laggy and practically unusable. But I suppose we could consider that malware anyway.

Is this slop written? It sure feels like it

The only useful parts are:

Avoid unnecessary javascript

Avoid large images