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PSA Googlebot tries to render pages to understand what they look like, to better understand the value & context of your site's content. This requires that your JS & CSS files be crawlable. Don't block these files for Googlebot in robots.txt, if you want Google to understand your site optimally.

I am curious: why would sites block these files?

I've found an over-obsession with "crawl budget" for smaller sites that really don't need to worry about it is often behind the thought process.

That's a huge challenge with technical SEO messaging, IMO -- what might be critically important for huge sites can be completely irrelevant for small-to-medium sites.