I somewhat expected the comments to be all against. It is good to stop and question the status quo. For example, why JSON won XML? On the other hand, S-expressions did not. There is markdown also, which is "for humans", but then there is YAML as JSON is not enough for some other humans. Or how about Semantic web's RDF? Built solely on graphs of triples?

HTML can be produced with any of the above-mentioned means. Who said it should be written manually?

Yes HTML has fancy, organically grown syntax. I am more concerned browser layout engines do not have any beauty (in the mathematical sense) in them (prove me wrong). Donald Knuth's TeX is more beautiful there.

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I expected the article to expand more on why infalting semantics is so bad, but then the article took another turn.