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.
I think this is something like a "delayed cargo culting", or "cargo culting based on outdated facts".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.
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.