This is the issue. People (especially on HN) complain about people building un-semantic, inaccessible websites that don't work with JS disabled—and I agree this

This is the issue. People (especially on HN) complain about people building un-semantic, inaccessible websites that don't work with JS disabled—and I agree this sucks—but HTML is so limited your only choice is to build the niceties yourself or skip them altogether. Sure, in some circumstances you can progressively enhance (sortable table for example), but many cases having a HTML fallback that still does what you need it to is a ton of extra work. HTML covers text, painfully basic tables, semantic rectangles (<nav>, <aside>, etc.), form inputs, and embedded media. Basically, anything you could build with a word processor. Outside of that, you're on your own. JavaScript and CSS are continually improving and are so much more capable than they were even five years ago, but it feels like HTML is just stagnating. Why can't we have new elements every year, with behaviour? Stuff that works just fine out of the box, but can be easily tweaked with CSS or a little sprinkling of JS. The amount of developer time and bandwidth we could save not having to re-invent the wheel for every little thing.