[conception]

The worst thing on the modern web is people using divs for table data. What do you mean this table isn’t sortable? M365 Admin is the worst offender I’ve come across on this. Just terrible table implementations on almost every page.

[mr_toad]

Is there a term for the opposite of cargo culting? Where everyone avoids something, but no one remembers why? Because that’s basically where HTML tables have ended up.

[embedding-shape]

I think this is something like a "delayed cargo culting", or "cargo culting based on outdated facts". I think it's basically the same as the hypothesis from the "Monkey Ladder Experiment", where monkeys got punished when trying to get a banana, and eventually all the monkeys were replaced with monkeys that didn't realize why the banana was off-limits, yet persisted in trying to "help" other monkeys trying to prevent them from getting the banana.

I'm not sure if I read that that specific experiment was debunked or not, but it certainly sounds familiar to how some developer trends get propagated even though the ground truth as changed.

[joquarky]

I would guess that people became so afraid of being accused of using tables for layout that they don't use them at all.

[paradox460]

It's still cargo culting

[ralusek]

Using HTML Tables doesn’t just make your data sortable