I don't exactly write "HTML" by hand if by HTML one means (as seems to be implied in the article) long text documents with HTML tags in it. For that I use markd

I don't exactly write "HTML" by hand if by HTML one means (as seems to be implied in the article) long text documents with HTML tags in it. For that I use markdown because it's faster and much easier to read. But I do write HTML templates by hand when I code webapps; it's cleaner and more efficient than use some kind of library. I tend to use DIVs with custom data- attributes; I don't know if it's a good or bad practice but I'm not familiar enough with other approaches and I'm used to it. I also code SVGs by hand and it's surprisingly easy and straightforward; most (not all, but most) drawings can be approximated by combining elementary shapes (instead of paths).