Originally, hand-writing HTML was a supposed-to-be-accessible-to-non-technical-users way to make a website.
Until the late 1990's, HTML was used sort of like Markdown is used today.
A secret reason why I like to push markdown workflows is that you can't deviate from the site's overall look and feel. Focus on your content, hit publish and it will look good. Even if we change the site's look down the road, the content is still going to be fine.
It gave the internet character and flaws. Now it feels like everyone limits themselves to publishing nothing but perfect images of themselves.
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For example:
Wikipedia only recently perfected their Visual Editor in a way that made me feel comfortable using it, but it's still a situational decision whether I use VE or edit the source directly.
And at $dayjob I am accustomed to poring over raw MarkDown, due to lack of a viable WYSIWYG application.