I think the question misunderstands the nature of the task. The HN page is a list with each list entry having a similar structure being made up on a number of

I think the question misunderstands the nature of the task. The HN page is a list with each list entry having a similar structure being made up on a number of components (like an up vote facility). the HTML table seems to fit the requirement perfectly. As to "in line" styles and JavaScript - this approach would seem to me to be very well suited to the task of generating the individual components that collectively construct the list of entries. A small snippet of code can be used to generate each component. Maintenance is a breeze - adjustments need only be made in one place in the code base. So all in all, what we see is a simple solution to a straightforward task.