No, clean HTML semantics still matters a lot! Forget about programmatic efficiencies like crawlers and page load times. Think about the poor web dev who is handed this steaming heap of bad markup like so:
Management: "We need you to change all the buttons on this web site and enlarge the logo."
Web dev: "OK, these pages were puked out of Muse. Do you have the Muse project files and a copy of Muse for me to install?"
Management: "Muse? What's that? No, we don't have the source files. Can't you just edit the page?"
Web dev: "Sure. After I drink this bottle of Scotch and look for other job postings."
So guess what? HTML is still source code not a machine language.
So guess what? HTML is still source code not a machine language.
Your metaphor would be great, if it wasn't for all the times developers (myself included) have been asked to dig into assembly or bytecode to fix something when the higher level source file had been lost to the ages.
Compared to those, editing machine generated html is a treat.
Management: "We need you to change all the buttons on this web site and enlarge the logo."
Web dev: "OK, these pages were puked out of Muse. Do you have the Muse project files and a copy of Muse for me to install?"
Management: "Muse? What's that? No, we don't have the source files. Can't you just edit the page?"
Web dev: "Sure. After I drink this bottle of Scotch and look for other job postings."
So guess what? HTML is still source code not a machine language.