That analogy doesn't hold up, because HTML is not just machine code. The next iteration of the web requires that we think of HTML as a means to provide meaning,

That analogy doesn't hold up, because HTML is not just machine code. The next iteration of the web requires that we think of HTML as a means to provide meaning, not just format for display. Generated code doesn't have to misuse constructs. You can just as easily generate a nested unordered-list with good semantic IDs and class names.