No, it wasn't misguided. It worked great, and made writing web applications so much better and easier than it had been.
But Javascript has come a looong way in the last 15 years, and sophisticated web applications do a lot more client-side processing these days. That leads to different architectures, where continuations aren't as advantageous as they had been.
Hacker News is notable in that it doesn't use much client-side code and sticks to an old-school links-and-forms UI. Closures still make a lot of sense for that architecture.
But Javascript has come a looong way in the last 15 years, and sophisticated web applications do a lot more client-side processing these days. That leads to different architectures, where continuations aren't as advantageous as they had been.
Hacker News is notable in that it doesn't use much client-side code and sticks to an old-school links-and-forms UI. Closures still make a lot of sense for that architecture.