Yet many of these use cases can be delivered to the end user as a document. Consider Hacker News. I am able to browse the site and submit comments in web browsers that do not support JS. (This comment is being submitted by one such web browser.)
This approach does not work for everything, nor does it work for everyone. Someone creating a blog post is probably going to prefer the use of JS to make their browser work more like a word processor. It can be done without JS, but that typically involves some form of markup that only a handful will enjoy. You can offer a map service without making it behave like an app, but most people will find a more interactive user interface more efficient. You certainly aren't going to be able to create emulators of vintage computers without JS.
That being said, we can do an awful lot in a useful way while serving up static documents.
My separation of document/non-document was not about javascript, it was about the type of functionality the site offers.
I would call a site like https://danluu.com/ document focused, while hacker news is focused on being a platform for conversation and a ranked news feed.
If you were to download danluu.com and brouwse it locally you wouldn't miss much, while if you where to do the same for hacker news you would only get one part of the offered experience.
Javascript enables this difference to grow to much greater extents but it is not necessary to me.
This approach does not work for everything, nor does it work for everyone. Someone creating a blog post is probably going to prefer the use of JS to make their browser work more like a word processor. It can be done without JS, but that typically involves some form of markup that only a handful will enjoy. You can offer a map service without making it behave like an app, but most people will find a more interactive user interface more efficient. You certainly aren't going to be able to create emulators of vintage computers without JS.
That being said, we can do an awful lot in a useful way while serving up static documents.