Are you talking about the site from the submission? To be fair, it never claims itself to be HTML only. It does say performance was improved by being much more mindful about how much other stuff, including CSS and javascript, is included. The linked blog post about the perf improvements goes into some detail about that. Doesn't smell like false advertising to me. The site then goes on to show by extreme example that you don't technically need anything other than HTML to make a website.
I do agree with your points about what is necessary these days. A dash of CSS, tables only for tabular data, other small touches. Like, that's a more reasonable standard for "what is necessary". And to me, I think your comments are in line with the spirit of the original post.
I do agree with your points about what is necessary these days. A dash of CSS, tables only for tabular data, other small touches. Like, that's a more reasonable standard for "what is necessary". And to me, I think your comments are in line with the spirit of the original post.