I agree with everything, but just to be clear:

> This is what web developers want

I don't think it is what web developers want, it is what customers expect.

Of course there are plenty of situation where the page is totally bloated and could be much leaner, but the overall trend to build web applications instead of web pages is dictated by user expectations and, as a consequence, requirements.

Users say "the page shall not load in less than 15 seconds and shall not use less than 5% of my monthly dataplan"?

Odd… are these people with us?