Two things: Ajax is a good idea and I have no problem with it. CSR for updates is not an issue. My problem is with using it for whole pages that cannot render at all until a huge JS program has been run. When you're building a SPA, this is fine. But most web pages (like the original blog post here) shouldn't be SPAs.

Second, I didn't remember that clause from TBR's memo, so thanks for the reminder.