The reason JavaScript wasnt as necessary for sites back then is because it wasn't supported properly by all browsers, and had some gaping security flaws, so disabling it or not even having it was very common. At the time, prudence dictated the need to build for it. Neither of these are true any longer, so building for that .1% use case is not logical from a time or money perspective.
This article is basically "Pepperidge Farms remembers".