If I'm interpreting this whole discussion properly, it seems that the fact that "modern web development" is bloated as hell, means that the messy table-based layout on HN is a-okay, because you really can't expect people to learn from history more than a single step back, or something.

Yes indeed, the shit that web developers were trying to get rid of around 2005-ish, is actually better than we have today on many pages.

Who are all these programmers that like bloat so much??